Supreme Commander: Babylonia
by Guardian54
Summary: Sort-of Sequel to SupCom: Reclaimers, focuses on two characters we haven't seen much of thus far. Legendary Commander T'Soni and Templar Xavier Fran (Papa Shepard) will return from the "dead" and dominate this crossover. I am expecting actual feedback (constructive criticism welcome, flames are NOT) on this one!
1. The Legend Rides Again…

A/N: This is the beginning of SupCom meeting Babylon 5. Believe me, while the first two chapters (both are/will be uploaded Dec 19, 2012) may not seem critically important, they set the stage for everything that comes before AND after. SupCom: Babylonia mainly puts attention on Commander T'Soni (New Edition) and Templar Xavier Fran (the name should sound vaguely familiar if you're a detail freak like me) so this is me introducing the characters.

_**We would like to reiterate that people here DO NOT GROW OLD physically after they mature, so Templar Fran looks about the same at 200 as he did when he was 25, maybe with a couple different scars that haven't faded, but that's about it. Therefore other than pedophilia there's not much in terms of age differences mattering.**_

Am trying to aim for 5000-6000 word chapters instead of my traditional 10K. However, be warned that **after first 2 chapters, this will be on basically hiatus for a LONG time** (I am quite certain you can figure out why just from this chapter, as Bruto22 said on the HS series, spin-off from the SI Archives series, referencing past events that have not yet been written can be quite confusing).

* * *

Chapter 1: The Legend Rides Again…

_The Deepest Sub-Basement (10 kilometres down from the surface), Dr. Brackman's Core Facility, Procyon, March 9, 3872_

"Are you sure about this?" James Shepard asked _again_.

Crystal's hologram stared at him with a totally bored look, eyes lidded and lower lip jutting forward "Yes, what did you think?"

John shrugged "Hey, we're just making sure, I mean, from what I know, most entities with the amount of experience you have tend to prefer trying to 'transcend the material plane' or something like that, Reapers excluded."

"And here I thought he was making this whole situation a bit more dramatic-sounding for our collective benefit." Crystal replied sarcastically, but in a more melodic voice, Commander T'Soni's voice. "Now, please stand back while I access the… hardware that my, uh, _Origin_ I suppose, left behind for me to retrieve once I felt that it was time."

The twins did as they were told, and so did Doctor Brackman's hologram. Elite Commander Dostya Mikhailovich—this was what her family name came out to be, however inaccurate it was—had been standing back to begin with and did not move as the only stasis pod in the facility was revealed. The facility moved the opaque covers that had disguised it as a piece of wall to either side and revealed the empty shell of the war machine that had practically carried the Cybran Nation through most of the Infinite War. It was the hollow husk of the same war machine that had inspired Dostya to become an ACU pilot in the first place, a few hundred years ago. It was the body of Commander T'Soni, looking strangely peaceful for who she had been and what she had represented.

Dostya had raised an eyebrow when the Reach Artifact first displayed sentience and subsequently called itself Crystal, she'd been somewhat surprised when it had claimed that it contained a replica of Commander T'Soni's spirit. Given the sort of stuff she'd seen Doctor Brackman and Commander T'Soni, back when said Commander was alive and basically ran the Cybran military, pull off, very few things could really surprise her. This revelation… well, this one was more abject shock than just a surprise, she had never known where Commander T'Soni had disappeared to on the day she ostensibly died, fading from existence. The Doctor had never told her of this, the greatest secret the Cybran Nation had held for a hundred and ten years, waiting to be returned to its rightful heir, the direct copy of the thought processes of the one who had originally inhabited it.

"Turning the stasis field off now." The Commander's Psionic hologram intoned with a small smile. "Checking vitals… life support is active, minimal brain activity, just enough to keep vital organs functional, no damage overall… good, my Origin" Dostya supposed it made sense that the woman, if you could call her that right now, would use that term for the one she was basically mentally cloned from "kept it in good condition even at the end when she had to leave… to wipe the slate clean, start anew… and yes, I am aware I can channelling you there Doctor. Now, time to transfer myself back in, fastest way is to touch the largest gathering of nerve clusters on me excluding my brain. Crystal, I'm opening the cover of the pod, you take the helm please."

"Alright." The pink shard floated in as the pod doors were hissing open, then attached its largest flat surface to the flat front surface of the finely-polished-looking red gem on the front of the woman's chest. It protruded only slightly (i.e. a couple centimetres) from her skin, was hexagonal in overall shape, and was located near the bottom of her sternum, anchored firmly to said bone. It was surrounded on all sides (backside included) by a layer of white pigment, with many embedded bio-electric field projection clusters. It was used as a focusing crystal much of the time, as well as energy storage, when the being it was attached to was active. The counterpart on the back of the being allowed firing of energy strikes behind her, but was more used to help shape the field structure of the strike fired from the front, and to act as a nexus for defensive fields, than actual offence.

The body spasmed suddenly, almost violently, as both pink crystal and red gem flared brightly for a long, long moment as nerves were fired in succession and Psi-triggered gates inside the being's brain and auxiliary Psionic organs opened , then faded. The woman tried to lean forward as if she was going to be sitting up, then hit her head on the still-sliding cover of the pod and fell back onto the energy field that had helped support her body for a hundred and ten years. "Ow…" she groaned, then, with her eyes still shut, said slowly "If anyone else ever tries this sort of out-of-body thing again, please tell them to raise the pod cover completely before syncing with their new body." Large crimson irises were revealed on otherwise human-looking eyes slowly from behind pale eyelids and green eyelashes as if the inhabitant wasn't sure how to work her eyelids. Fortunately, there was no discomfort from the lights, as the body never adapted to total darkness due to being in stasis. After the pod cover was all the way up, the green-haired woman grabbed the sides of the pod and pulled herself out, stepping out onto the black floor for the first time in quite a while. She was moving very slowly throughout the process as if testing the feel of the pod edges or hard, warm floor against her alabaster-white skin, flexing her muscles in the sort of joy a prisoner experiences after what seemed to be an eternity locked up.

She lifted her arms a few times, as if testing their weight, before forming fists and thrusting her arms up "I'm alive!" She jumped for joy… only to promptly hit the ceiling with her fists as the body still was used to levitating i.e. cancelling gravity. "Well, I hope that was off the record." She said embarrassedly before wishing gravity was back on… and fell onto her feet as her mind decided to make gravity apply for herself again. "This is going to take some time getting use to, isn't it?" She muttered to the audience, who respected her too much to laugh. "Where did she stash the rest of my clothes?" _Huh, sounds almost weird to call something truly mine for a change… this body… I suppose it's mine now… It feels so different, to actually be able to touch, smell, and all that. What the mind perceives and what the body perceives are truly… different._

"Here they are, stashed as she left them." Brackman said, a mechanical arm bringing forth the green and white clothes that had seemed to be a part of Commander T'Soni, so often did she wear them or a blue and white variant. "We can give you some privacy if you wish."

"There's no need to do that, Doc." _Wow, speaking this way, with an actual mouth, to the old guy seems so much more comfortable, it's like I've known him for centuries when in reality_ I _have known him for mere months…_ "I got everything covered" Said coverage consisted of a simple white bra only barely visible against her near-reflective, ethereal skin and similar white shorts. They seemed moulded to her in a way that almost suggested they were built by her body, for her body. She pulled the white dress, which had a green-tinted bio-electric field projection support weave on the inside, over her head and got her arms through before pulling it down. After some effort, she decided not to bother trying to completely fit it to herself manually and let it snap naturally into place as she activated what amounted to a structural field for her kind.

At the same time as her fields snapped on, her hair seemed to whip itself into shape instantaneously, the strands from the forward-facing quadrant of her scalp whipping together as the standard fields pushed the conduits into shape, arching over her forehead , past the bridge of her nose and finally ending in a point slightly beyond her cherry-red lips. She could probably touch it with her tongue if she wanted, even though said tongue was no different in shape and size from that of a typical human. The polarization pattern of the pigment crystals in the fibres were synchronized in a mere moment by the field harmonic, so they were essentially see-through to her but not to others. The rest of her hair formed a dome-shaped helmet over her scalp and curled upward beneath her psi-focusing organs and ears almost like horns. However, despite all these snaps to combat readiness, it seemed overall field strength was not up to what her mind told her it should be… ah. Pulling on the green crop top, which was also fastening-free and went right over her head, prompted the field to begin slowly recharging toward a higher level, but something still seemed missing.

_Right, the field recharges faster if I deactivate it…_ She did just that…_ Ouch that defensive mechanism is annoying, got to get used to it…_ She'd stumbled as the collapsing of the field made her body try to minimize its target profile i.e. try to curl up into a ball, which she resisted. Forcing herself to move seemed unnecessarily difficult for a moment before her perception went back to normal and she could move again, though her body warned her that this would reduce recharge rate significantly compared to what it would be if she were not moving under her own power, probably as her field processor nodes had to run many more standby alignment calculations per second instead of devoting most of their power supply to filling the capacitors.

After donning white thigh-high, almost completely breathable socks that also form-fit her and overlapped a bit with her shorts, seemingly sealing to them, she finally put on the last pieces of what she knew would be her usual attire. These were two long green gloves that went to the middle of her upper arms, again seemingly tailored for her with how they fit snugly but not tightly. With the sleeves of the green top slipping over them perfectly ("should have put the jacket on last…"), it seemed that her arms were green. "Hmm, wish red was a colour option for the sake of Cybran colour schemes." She synched the field emitter nodes under her surprisingly soft skin ("Always thought this platform would be sturdier to the touch…") to the projection matrix of her skin and of the clothes her body had, long ago, entered this form wearing. After flexing and doings some basic stretches and manoeuvrability tests, including walking up the wall and across the ceiling with anti-gravity active, she reactivated her fields and noticed that the tensile strength and impact resistance of her skin seemed to grow immeasurably while flexibility was still retained.

"Well, everything seems to be working, I should probably test it out on a weapons range though, check if the armaments are still up to scratch." She said as she floated over to the three humans and a hologram before setting down and going back to walking with them, savouring the feeling of the warm floor under her feet, though she had to mentally force her socks to allow her feet to feel the temperature of the floor. "Maybe I should grab my stuff from my old apartment first, the next mission for me will be rolling around really soon and I don't want to lose any of the old memoirs, even if they were from another lifetime by another woman. I have a feeling Sapphire T'Soni will be happy to get her old Pikachu doll back from her sort of ex-mother as a first birthday present… after she's born again that is. You, boy, have a lot of work to catch up on with 'my' reincarnation!" She prodded John's armoured chest. He didn't reply to the teasing except with a small nod of approval. Liara herself wasn't here to witness her pre-incarnation sort of rise from the not-so-dead… she was off spending time with her mother and doing other, Broker-ish (Feron asked for a break) business for the next couple of weeks. That might have been part of why Crystal… no, the Commander, decided it was time.

"Just don't get too surprised and drop the kids on their heads when they Psi-yell or actually yell at you guys and each other over the joys of being re-spawned, _again_. They'll know their own names when the time comes." She turned her head to look at Brackman again as they moved upward in the elevator "I'm not sure if I'll squeeze out any more eggs at any point, but in case I do and happen to have sons I want my Origin's pendant back from whatever display case you guys put it in after she departed… very few girls would accept an incompetent male who failed to at least _find_ one of those catalysts, whether he uses it or not…"

* * *

_During the ransacking of what was considered almost hallowed ground to Cybran ACU pilots…_

"And let's not forget my, well, her, anyways, favourite hidey-hole." She picked up a black and red ball, probably the most Cybran-coloured thing she had with her at the moment. It was mostly black, with a gold band around the equator with a gold button set in it, with polar circles around the 60 degrees latitudes in red with gold trim. "Should still be keyed to my field signature… I'll test it later."

"Is that everything?" John was currently holding two backpacks stuffed full of items—even quantum storage tech mostly only allowed so much space before the mass, which was not completely dampened (to be fair you only felt about a hundredth of it in simpler versions like the bags, more complex and therefore expensive, be it in time or production cost, models could reduce it much further) began to get restrictive, and they didn't feel like straining the straps of the bags.

"Yeah, we got everything that I, well, she, brought from her homeworld, plus items imported later on from there to help combat operations." The Commander looked around once, then took a deep breath "Let's go, I have places to be and things to do."

* * *

_The Doctor's Office, Dr. Brackman's Core Facility, Procyon, March 9, 3872_

"Are you absolutely certain of this?" Brackman questioned, it did sound rather far-fetched… almost like…

"Yes, Doctor, and I know what you might be thinking, this is basically the universe or multi-verse or whatever the hell is out there giving the other factions in the Infinite War the Finger of God, but it's the truth. That gateway that we discovered a couple weeks ago and still have scientists investigating is supposed to be the trigger to starting a time loop that ensures the existence of the Cybran Nation. The fact that we are here talking today means that the time loop happened, it's stupid, but we need to get her to do this, and the worst part of it, we need to make sure she doesn't know." Commander T'Soni explained.

"'She' is right here, you know…" Brackman said, as he looked pointedly at where Hannah was standing in her armour, then understood suddenly "Unless… no, this can't be…"

"Why not? You wanted me to be here in Cybran Space for the expected arrival of the Reaper fleets, so here I am, but _she_ does have responsibilities to history… she might be soaking up the sunshine and pampering on Psi-5-Aurigae 2" It was one of the Aeon resort worlds, orbiting a Sun-like star. "right now, but she needs to go through that bound-to-malfunction wormhole in about two days time when her leave ends. My only question is, how the hell did Xavier manage to get me pregnant before I left?" Hannah Shepard, looking much wiser—though no older with the cellular regeneration of modern humans plus Cybran nanotechnology keeping her in shape—than the last time Brackman had seen her, almost a week ago, asked the Commander. It had been a bit of a shock to Brackman when she turned up earlier that day with ACU and armour, especially since that same ACU was, now that he requested information to check, _also still standing in the garage_ of the main Central Gate Complex of Procyon. "Did you save a genetic sample from him, engineer some sperm from it, and then use a solid illusion to inseminate me after you extended my shore leave by a day, making my ACU's clock say differently so that I wouldn't notice that it wasn't a very realistic dream?"

Brackman knew exactly what had happened now, it wasn't surprising once you got around the hurdle of time travel. If you chuck someone into the past, they WILL, if they can, come back to find you. On the other hand, seeing someone that lived through more years (objectively, not subjectively) than he had plotting with someone else to send herself back in time was… "Funny, isn't it?" The Russian—technically that was just a cultural designator nowadays—accented voice said from his hologram's left. Dostya was smirking slightly, understanding that her idol and teacher, Commander T'Soni, had in fact been taught initially by someone who had once idolized and been taught by Dostya herself. "Knowing that we, the Cybran Nation, exist today because we exist today?"

"Yes, yes it is, old friend."

Dostya flicked her eyes toward him for a moment before looking back to the two Commanders having a staring match "Speak for yourself, older friend."

"Are you guys done the background chatter yet?" Commander T'Soni asked. "I'd like to tell you guys how this happened, but I'd prefer if I didn't have to repeat myself." She ran a hand through her green hair, which reached just past shoulder length, and rubbed her Psi-focusing organs, located on either side of her head just under her pointed, backward-swept ears and resembling said ears in outline, but shaped as solid cones. They were about the same texture to the touch as a human's earlobe, but were reinforced by cartilage and dense field emitter node webs. After all, any time they were active and potentially volatile if breached, the fields had to be up, stiffening them and preventing breaching.

The two of them nodded "Very well, Hannah, no, I didn't do it directly… he did it himself."

Hannah was taken aback. _How is this possible?_ "But… he's dead. I observed his ACU exploding with a drone as I waited for history to play out, hoping there was something I could change since I didn't know for certain that he'd died… It's not possible for him to still be alive…"

"Oh, it is _very_ possible if you know how to persuade the universe to just say 'NO'. There is a reason I can only deploy a full-spectrum Max Protect field every twenty minutes or so and it only holds for about a minute, and the weaker the user the longer they need to take to recharge, the Universe is quite lazy in terms of allowing this sort of move to be used. In fact, the Infinite War, with my existence as a known, could have ended in one of two ways that would accommodate the current state of you surviving to be sent back to ensure I existed. One way was that you would fire Black Sun, thus hindering the Seraphim campaign in terms of distance gated per jump being highly restricted, the alternative is that the Aeon would have won, led by Princess Rhianne's pacifist faction." There was a sigh of relief from the Cybrans in the room, since that was the second best outcome other than direct Cybran victory. "This would result in more Coalition military might being on-hand to meet the Seraphim."

"My Origin's precognition was uncertain as to which outcome would be the one in this time loop, mostly because you never told me and this part of what she could See was blurred, but rest assured that I could and would have Teleported myself to assist Princess Rhianne in forcibly broadcasting her message and mindset of peace through the QGN if needed. A Max Protect of mine would have no problem holding off the energy blast fired by the Black Sun installation for as long as the shield usually lasts, with no side-effects for Earth except frying the Black Sun facility during the firing. I know Black Sun's firepower was greatly amplified by the QGN, but still, I could have stopped it cold at the source for double its entire duration of firing no problem. In other words, popping in, throwing up a shield around him and me before teleporting out again was not a problem for me, since I had his ACU's access codes to momentarily deactivate the teleportation shield and delay the self-destruct sequence."

"That was a pretty long-winded way to tell me that you snatched him away in time and he's still alive, well then where did you hide him for the past twenty-some years?" Hannah's teeth were grinding by this point in a sudden wave of resentment at the woman before her. "And is he going to think he can get away with basically raping past-me since she had no idea it was real?" Some part of her was happy the guy she'd fallen head over heels (technically, that position is generally standing, not falling, but words were weird like that sometimes) back when she was younger turned out to be alive, but much of her was supremely pissed that she'd gone through 70 years (subjective time) of the past because of him. The fact that he was not there for ANY of the four children she'd had from him didn't help her opinion much, although it wasn't really his fault…

Commander T'Soni shook her head "Oh I highly doubt he'll think that, in fact, I'll probably have to take some time to persuade him that this is the best course of action."

"If I didn't spend most of the past century of subjective time musing over temporal mechanics, I'd question that… anyhow, are we going to introduce my boys to their father afterward?"

"Yes, just before HE goes through that wormhole after it re-stabilizes. We all know it's a Reaper design, but it seems to connect to the Andromeda Galaxy and that's worth exploring, especially since it seems to use a combination of Mass Relay and Slipspace technology."

"Well, can't say you didn't think this all through, you've got me here to help in the Reaper War, you've got someone sent through that Gateway to explore, and you've got me in the past making sure all this happens…" Hannah sighed "I can't say you don't know what it's like to shove two objects the diameter of grapefruits through a hole the diameter of a kiwi fruit…" _I am however awfully glad that I didn't have to do it myself the second time around back then, the first time was quite uncomfortable enough._ "…Let's do this thing."

* * *

_Librarian's Resting Place, Reach, March 9, 3872_

"So…" Hannah walked around the stasis pod which held the father of her sons, all four of them to date, although only two were still alive today. Her… daughter-in-law of sorts was standing by, watching, and the Cybran military head was also present since this was quite a momentous event. "_So…_"

"So I'm gathering you got over him in the last century of your subjective time?" Dostya prodded.

"More or less, we could still end up being friends, but… might depend on how much work you have to put into persuading him and whether or not I decide to strangle him after we finish making sure history happens. Are you sure his armour's sensors won't pick us up?" Dostya smiled savagely at Hannah changing the topic _Clearly she is still a bit fond of him at the very least… This is great! I'll go with it for now…_

"Nope, advances in stealth technology means his sensors won't see us, and remember, pilot armour didn't include Omni sensors back then. Even if they had, he'd detect us at maybe one-quarter the range they would be supposed to reach." Dostya said.

"Templar Xavier Fran… a bit of a weird name if you ask me, but I've watched his records, the main reason he hadn't hit Lord Crusader with all his experience and skill is because of his unacceptable political leanings. He's probably only a bit under Ariel in skill level." Commander T'Soni told them "Sacrificed himself defending and then creating a distraction so the Elite Four could get the job done, then escape that giant deathtrap of an operational area." She looked right at Hannah at this point. "Asked you to get an abortion because, according to him, he wasn't good enough to father your children, being too stupid to survive, just before his communications were jammed for the last time and moments before his ACU self-destructed."

Hannah shifted uncomfortably in her armour "What's your point."

"You guys were together for two years, Hannah, you should know he wouldn't agree to do this unless I was very persuasive." Hannah set her jaw defiantly, though she knew she was right, she was just upset over the issue of having _two more kids_ (!) among other things. "Now, let's get started, activate full stealth and cloaking please." That meant they were equal to background noise in any electromagnetic spectrum, completely "transparent" to all types of radiation (an effect created by the relevant stealth emitter fields). This was true of their signatures in all phases of reality and true of their seismic and gravimetric signatures. The systems also completely dampened the seismic signatures of their feet hitting the ground and the noise they would otherwise have made by moving through even the air. So-called "Radar" in the Coalition was far more sophisticated than the name suggested, and Omni sensors relied on the quantum signatures of matter and energy, going into subspace sensing and even the surface phases of Slipspace to locate objects' signatures, in addition to compiling a lot of other data.

The pod hissed open before the lid retracted, and the Commander deactivated the stasis field. The lightly armoured soldier within slumped forward slightly and threw his arms out to catch himself before he even opened his eyes to find himself caught by green-gloved hands. He pushed himself upright, looking at the woman's face questioningly "Commander T'Soni?" _I could swear someone grabbed me just before my ACU went up, but… how? Is this supposed to be the afterlife? It looks nothing like they said it would…_

"Yep, it's me, Templar, long time, no see." She reached her hand out and they shook hands, although Templar Fran was a bit hesitant to do so, given the only times he'd actually seen her in person she'd been fighting him and, though sometimes their battles took some time, trouncing him soundly. There was even a case where she'd had units of hers physically GRAB and restrain his ACU only to drop him in a Quantum Gate of hers, dialled to send him back to Aeon territory. That had earned him a couple years of investigation from his superiors on suspicions of collaboration, due to his already questionably humanitarian political leanings, and resulted in his demotion from Crusader back to Templar rank. "I'm sure you have a lot of questions, so feel free to ask."

"Why am I here? How am I here?" He paused, considering how stupid the next question might sound "…Is this some part of the afterlife?" He sighed as the woman standing in front of him burst into laughter, it wasn't unexpected, as the last question HAD been a bit dumb.

Hannah Shepard and Dostya Mikhailovich were both wearing happy expressions as they stood hidden in a corner of the room. Dostya was smirking at Hannah's fond expression, which she could see by the camera feed that Hannah was sharing with her, displayed on a corner of her HUD as a picture-in-picture. _I missed his voice more than I 'd thought… I guess this was why even Jane, who's _younger_ than me, warned me about having totally serious relationships when you're really young, it's hard to forget them…_ She just realized something _Damn it, Dostya…_ "Stop smirking, Dostya, just because I had a hard time moving on… you've had how many relationships in the past few decades?" That wiped the smirk off her friend's face, replacing it with a grimace. "Sorry, that was rude of me… wish she'd stop laughing at him so rudely though." She grumbled over their private channel and the smirk returned in full force before Hannah groaned at realizing what she'd said without thinking. _Come one, a century of additional wisdom should be at least useable, right?_

Commander T'Soni was still chuckling as she replied "You're not dead, Templar, I saved you via teleportation from your ACU before it could self-destruct. And before you even voice it, I'm not dead either, I, well… walk with me and I'll tell you a story."

"Don't have much of a choice, do I?" Xavier answered, wondering how his family was doing and whether or not they'd acknowledged his existence again, given how he'd been disowned when they found out he was dating Hannah seriously. His father had been mostly angry that he was taking advantage of the "childish crush" of someone almost two hundred years younger than him. He'd resented this since it wasn't like he (or she for that matter) was one of those pre-Quantum Age humans that got all wrinkled and sickly when they got older. His mother on the other hand had reminded his father that her parents had been a hundred and seventy years apart age-wise and their relationship had worked out well until they were killed by a UEF attack, and there were a few other couples even further apart in age. That had seemed to almost go well, but then she screamed at him for half an hour for being with "that _thing_" and finally told him she was filing documents to disown him before cutting the connection. They had cut all contact with him after that, though he'd tried several times to call them before his last combat sortie.

Commander T'Soni decided to give him the heavily compacted and watered-down version "I was born almost a thousand years ago. I had a couple happy decades with good friends and a loving family. I had some adventures, and I eventually settled down with a young man not unlike you. We had some wonderful years together before it all came crashing down… After my kids and my husband died, I tried several times to join them, but in the end, my mother-in-law prevented me from doing so and showed me the path she knew was destined for me. After learning from her, I set out to save the foundering Cybran Nation, and the rest, as they say, is history."

"That's something I never heard about you before… all I'd known was that you came abruptly onto the scene of the War, stayed for eight hundred years, and abruptly left it a hundred and ten years ago."

"Well, that was all that most people knew. Only Doctor Brackman knew that I had to lie in wait, or at the very least, create a copy of my soul to eventually take over my body while the original reincarnated, and yes, Templar, you are staring at what used to be a copy, now inhabiting the body the original Commander T'Soni left me. I haven't forgotten any of my skills though… so don't get any ideas on challenging me to a simulator match." They kept walking through the installation, taking, well, the emergency stairs, which were very, very long. Part of the installation had been wrecked by the Covenant during the Covenant War, but most of it was sequestered far from the Crystal Chamber and thus escaped unscathed, as planned.

"Okay… what does this have to do with me?"

She shrugged they reached a landing and she stopped "My reincarnation is well on her way to becoming your daughter-in-law, and I was technically your daughter-in-law before my husband died."

He gaped and spluttered "What? But… that doesn't make sense? How could I have had a son that lived nine hundred years ago and again now? How could I have had a son period? The only woman I ever got pregnant.." He trailed off, his face crumpling in sadness.

"Oh, you didn't just get your dear Hannah pregnant once, as far as I know."

"You mean she actually not only _gave birth_, and had _twins_? I though she was smart enough to get rid of a burden form a man too stupid to even survive…" He slapped himself sharply, although he had the wrong interpretation "And I wasn't there… she found someone to help her take care of them, right?"

"Well, Jane—"

"Her younger sister, okay…" Xavier still looked concerned "What about her parents?"

"—helped take care of her kids whenever she had to go into the field, which was quite rare… Her parents refused to acknowledge her after she told them she wasn't getting an abortion."

Templar Fran ran a hand through his black hair and groaned "She always was stubborn. How many years has it been since I've been in that stasis pod?"

"Give it another six days and it'll have been twenty-three years."

Xavier stared and gaped, then smiled sadly "Seems the boys took after their mother… getting so committed so young. When I was that age I was a bit of a player… until I got in the military at least. Only twenty-two years old and on the fast track to settling down… can't believe I missed their whole lives, just like that…"

Commander T'Soni rolled her eyes before pushing a bit "I sincerely hope you weren't just playing around with Hannah."

Xavier looked deeply offended at that "Do you think I would be okay with getting disowned if I wasn't completely serious? No, I thought she was… never mind, why'd you say one of my kids lived over 900 years ago? Don't tell me… she went _back in time_? It must have been really tough for her…"

"Well, I it's pretty obvious to me what she saw in you, Templar… Oh, and she hasn't gone back in time yet. I woke you up at this time because we need a highly respected commander i.e. you to lead a task force on a mission, and we need you to get her pregnant before she can go back in time, it is crucial to maintaining temporal continuity."

Xavier stopped dead "NO." He stated with an air of finality. _I am not going to do that to her, abandoning her to raise our—no, I can't call myself their father because I was never in their lives—her children alone again. I wish I'd never done it before, but definitely not again, never again…_

She sighed and rubbed her forehead "You don't get it, do you? The fact that I am here right now says that you agreed, at some point, to this mad scheme. You must eventually give in, for reality demands it."

He stared at her and shook his head furiously before she smirked and teleported the two of them, along with two invisible others, away to the Gate they'd built on Reach. Programming the two other women's armour to accept her teleportation signature instead of anchoring the user in reality was tough, but the three of them had managed to make it work. From there, they would gate to Psi-5-Aurigae II, where they would teleport to the bungalow Hannah had been living in for her shore leave. The Commander could have teleported them the whole way, but that would have been an unnecessary waste of energy and she had to run some tests on her own abilities first, to make sure they were all up to scratch, before doing such a long jump of about 20,000 light years. If she's been somewhere, relative to an identifiable gravity signature and set of space-tie coordinates, she generally has no problem teleporting there, however far it may be, though the strain used to be noticeable for jumps over about 10,000 light-years in the old days.

* * *

A/N: Did anyone realize what the really fat yellow stuffed toy mouse with a funny tail and the stone that glittered like eyes were in Commander T'Soni's apartment before I hit them with this hammer of revelation?

Psi-5 Aurigae is an actual sun-like star, I found it on Wikipedia.

I expect reviews **_even if the Mayan apocalypse comes true_**, hence why I'm throwing this out here on the 19th, to give you readers time to see it.

REVIEW (I actually expect reviews this time, probably mostly of the "Holy shit!" or "You are completely insane" variety, flames NOT welcome, if I can scientificalize so much fantasy stuff, that's a skill, not a weakness)!


	2. …On The Winds of Time

A/N: Hannah may seem a bit emotional here than previously shown, but she, well, sort of her anyways, knows why. ("I don't like getting to relaxed, I end up crying over little things…")

* * *

Chapter 2: …On The Winds of Time

_A Resort House, Psi-5-Aurigae II, March 9, 3872_

"This is right next door to where I was that night… I guess I was right in my initial assumption that that dream was too realistic." Hannah remarked to Dostya as they landed a la teleportation in the living room of the vacation house that past-Hannah had lived in for the past week.

"I will not do this to her again!" Xavier hissed furiously at the Legendary Commander, now having some idea as to why she'd spared his life when they met in battle in their past. "Leaving her to raise even one child on her own once is bad enough, and you're telling me she's doomed to have twins, _again_, just because she's some mad deity i.e. destiny's chew-toy, and be _completely_ alone? Without even the Cybran Network to offer her comfort? I said it already, NO."

"Templar, you're being honourable and all, but sometimes being stupidly noble is not going to do any of us any good. We exist in this time as we know it partly because you had inseminated her before she went back in time. She'll understand, and once we explain the reasons to her after she finishes running through the intervening years" Commander T'Soni elected not to tell him it was more than a millennium, at the _very least_, that Hannah would be hurled back in time. Hannah had never told her the specifics as to how long she'd been thrown back in time, and perhaps it was better this way. "in a time-distortion facility she'll be able to construct herself with her ACU, she'll thank you for doing it!"

_Well, thanking him for ensuring my existence, yes, for the… joy is not the correct term… _whatever_ of having small children to look after again… not so much._ Hannah thought amusedly before her bitter smirk softened to a happy smile _Although I must admit that dealing with cute little granddaughters was a wonderful experience, especially if they're of species that can take care of themselves basically from birth/hatching onward._

"I told you already, I'm not going to do it… I always wasted twenty-three years of her life that she'll never get back, I can't make her waste more time dealing with the offspring of a stupid bastard who's not going to be there for her and their children." He crossed his arms stubbornly.

The Commander sighed, then grabbed his armoured wrist and dragged him into the bedroom. Hannah and Dostya followed at a sedate pace, both grinning at the surrealism of watching Hannah sleep on the bed while she was standing in the room. Only Hannah was a bit worried since she knew she tended to be rather more emotional i.e. teary when being overly relaxed for too long, hence why it had been quite a few years since the last time she'd let herself take a week-long shore leave. From what she remembered, when he left that night she was going to act like a blubbery idiot, which would be embarrassing to watch… "I've set a sound barrier around her bed, she won't hear you right now, I want you to look at her for a few minutes, sit right here and just look at her."

"Okay… I guess arguing about this is going to be pointless so I'll do it. Still, I think this is a bit creepy…" Xavier said slowly before a hard glare made him roll his eyes in annoyance. However, he still did as he was ordered, seating himself quietly in the chair the Commander had pulled up close to the bed.

"You know, I agree, this is a bit creepy." Hannah said to Dostya, motioning to how her ex-boyfriend had his elbows rested on his thighs, leaned forward a bit and watching her past-self's sleeping face.

"I think it's still cute how you two do think alike just like you used to, and you either sleep on one side of the bed or hug your pillow which is on the other side…" Dostya grinned wider as Hannah rolled her eyes. "There she goes now." The Hannah on the bed had rolled over, shifting around without moving the blanket much, then wrapped her arm around the pillows that had been provided by the resort, well, she'd put her arm over a stack of two of them, the two she'd left on the other side of the bed, then hugged them to her chest before settling back down.

"I don't like people watching me sleep, especially when I have too many pillows and start acting like an idiot with them." Hannah scowled and Dostya rolled her eyes upward as if to say she was hopeless "I don't like the big, puffy pillows so many people like anyways, if they were half the size they'd be nice, but as is… I fell like I could suffocate myself by rolling over with my head on one of them." She wondered when the Templar would wake past-Hannah up, making her think it was a dream and all with his face lit only by the night lights in the room and the glittering of light from the planet's two moons reflecting off the water outside her balcony.

"I think you just wanted something big and warm to cuddle at night." Dostya said knowingly.

"Maybe after the Reapers. Any idea how long he's going to take with this or should I do some browsing and use my democratic powers on the Network?" Cybrans used the Cybran Network not only for socializing, sharing data [including watching porn], but also as a massive online democracy where information on an issue is publicly available (as well as, of course, rhetoric on the same issue) and people voted for the different sides of an issue. Vote weights differed by age and profession. For example, a doctor would have more weight on a medical issue in his field, rather less in other medical fields' issues, and would equal that of an "average citizen" on, say, the few military affairs that were voted on. Older people generally held somewhat more weight per vote, mostly as they were wiser (but there were fewer of them by far, thanks to the war, so they didn't dominate at all), unless the issue was mostly about the very young, in which case the weighting trend might differ.

"Stop pretending to be uninterested, I highly doubt you'd met anyone when you were in the past who were quite as interesting as him, or rather, who you had space left in your heart for." Dostya poked a hole in Hannah's train of thought.

Hannah snorted derisively "Sorry, but all available space is currently occupied by my children and prospective grandchildren who I'll be meeting again, particularly a pair of little blue babies that I'm expecting to be born within the next couple decades, please come back in another century or two of my subjective time."

Dostya just rolled her eyes as the still-younger—in subjective age only, not objective age— woman tapped into the Network and sighed dreamily "Feels so damned good to be back and surrounded by all this data again! I almost went insane the first few months after I went back there…" After a few minutes she added "My pregnancy helped keep me grounded, I think…"

It took nearly half an hour before Commander T'Soni said anything and Hannah paid attention to the scene before her again. "Templar…" Xavier Fran jumped in his seat a little from watching his ex-girlfriend sleep peacefully on her side of the rather large bed, he refocused on the Commander, standing next to him in her usual colours—ironically, green and white were typical Aeon colours—and looking grimly down at him "Do you want to let her exist or not?"

Xavier frowned, narrowing his eyes in suspicion and balling his fists "What?"

"If she never got pregnant within the next day or so, then the past that I know, that past could not have happened. If that past hadn't happened, I wouldn't exist, and if I didn't exist, the Cybran Nation would have been destroyed hundreds of years ago. Her ancestors would have been wiped out, and she would never have been born. Would you consign her, your sons, and all Cybrans alive today, to non-being simply to satisfy your own selfish desire to not be guilty?" she was leaning very close to his face now, her red-irised eyes glaring accusingly into his browns

"No wonder he seemed so guilty that day." Hannah said "I'm impressed… "

"Why can't I go back in time with her?" The Templar asked. _If I'm going to basically fool her into bearing more of my children, the least I can do is help her, or perhaps be a punching bag when she finds out about my deception._

"You are needed elsewhere… although you COULD go with her and be back here with good time, that is not history as I know it, and I know you would do anything to protect your sons." She closed her eyes, pulled back, and gulped harshly before stating in a whisper "But if my family hadn't died… I would never have been driven onto this path for the sole purpose of making sure my reincarnation never had to suffer what I had. I've seen them, my reincarnation and his, together. Technically, my reincarnation is with the older brother of my lover, but still, what they have… I can't break it in favour of trying to give myself a happier past. Besides, what's past is past, and what's the known past is even more unchangeable to us. If a tragedy fuelled my determination back in the war, then that tragedy will just have to happen. With you there where you were not, where from what I remember you were never, and from what Hannah told me nine hundred years ago you were never, things would not have come to pass the way they did."

"So you're saying I can't change history, no matter how much I might try?" He demanded angrily.

She shook her head sadly, clearing her throat before continuing in a normal voice "Outside a time loop, it is possible to change 'history', to have it branch into multiple timelines. Inside one, where or rather when we are now… no, unless a fashion can be contrived in which the time loop is still maintained, and that is typically not possible. Just… just be there for her tomorrow, and do the right thing, Templar, just do the right thing and make her as happy as she can be before she has to go off on another mission. Oh, and if she thinks this is all a dream, let her think it, she _must not realize the truth tomorrow_! The Hannah that taught me didn't know the truth, and that means… she didn't know if this was some sort of astral projection or not."

"You're asking me to basically rape her, by having sex with her without letting her knowing it's actually me, alive and well and all that…" The experienced Templar whispered, running his hands through his hair, obviously very conflicted. If he didn't do it, well that wasn't even an option since she wouldn't have ever existed and he wouldn't be able to choose that anyways as a consequence, but if he did, could he handle…

"…The weight of that on your conscience?" Commander T'Soni finished the thought for him.

He looked taken aback, his general-purpose shields were up and he wasn't broadcasting his thoughts actively, so how'd she know that and how come he hadn't detected her intrusion? "How'd you know that?"

"Psychic abilities, I can understand your thoughts, well, anything's thoughts, or at least the gist of what they're thinking." She grabbed a laser pistol from the holster she had attached to her thigh, checked that the safety was on, then tossed it to him "If you decide not to do it, you might as well turn that safety knob there to either semi-auto, burst or full auto, put the barrel against her head, and pull the trigger, because if you don't do it she'll never have existed, so she might as well have been killed by your hand."

It was clear from her relaxed posture that Commander T'Soni knew full well he'd never do anything of the sort. Older Hannah wasn't worried either, more from knowing he would rather blow his own brains out than _really_ harm her than the fact that she was standing there and therefore nothing happened to her. "I get it already… so she'll either be consigned to oblivion or be used like a damned… incubator." He was yanking on his own soft, short black hair by now, putting the weapon on the bedside table. He sat back for a few more minutes, staring at the younger Hannah as she turned onto her back, her mouth open just a little as her chest rose and fell in slow, deep, peaceful breaths. He gulped, passing the sidearm back to the Commander "I'll… I'll do it."

"He sure took his time…" Older Hannah remarked.

"Yep, well, has he proven at least somewhat worth waiting for?" Dostya prodded.

Her and Doctor Brackman's interest wasn't just because the Cybran leadership had a major hobby of matchmaking (this fact was considered Classified, although the top echelons of the Coalition knew full well), but because this was an important pair. Templar Xavier Fran, a veteran of the Infinite War and Division Commander Hannah Shepard were considered among the top commanders of their factions, and their union had been an example to the Coalition. Xavier had 150-plus years of Infinite War experience under his belt, and if not for his political leanings and certain events should have at least been a Grand Crusader, so he'd been taught extensively that Cybrans were abominations. Hannah had been basically raised to hate the Aeon fanatics and UEF oppressors, her high rank initially coming from a combination of political issues and simulator skill-rankings, though she later proved fully worthy. They should have despised each other, but looking past factional alignments, treating each other as just _people_, had resulted in a first friendly and then romantic relationship blossoming between them. It set an example to people of both factions that even if you've been conditioned to hate members of the other factions for essentially your whole life, something beautiful could come from treating them as just people…

Yes, Dostya, Brackman, Rhiza, Rhianne, Xavier and Hannah had once had a good laugh together over just how cheesy that sounded when the topic of the couple cropped up during a discussion. No, neither Xavier nor Hannah enjoyed the inconvenient and annoying press attention that they attracted by accident. Even in the 39th century, paparazzi was still about as irritating as it always had been in the past.

"Well, he's definitely pushing the right buttons. As for the future, since I have a feeling you'll ask, I don't know, we'll see where we go from being friends… if neither of us have found anyone by the end of the Reaper War… probably."

Dostya smiled "Perfect."

* * *

_A Resort, Psi-5-Aurigae II, March 10, 3872_

Dostya went back to the Cybran Nation Military Headquarters while Hannah decided to stay the next day to watch her old self think she was having a very happy dream. "I should have brought popcorn, Xavier is being really quite a nice man, even with all the guilt that you piled on him with regards to dealing with me… Why did you choose to bring him out of stasis now anyways?"

"Because you should be ovulating sometime in the night today, and it's not like you turned on your contraceptive implant anytime since he died." Hannah choked on her own spit as she watched her old self talk excitedly with what she had believed to be a dream about how the boys had been good kids and were turning out well, like their father. He was quite eager to learn more about his sons and how well they were doing in life. Together, the two went to the beach near the rented house, they went hiking together and enjoyed the scenery, they ate together at the resort's restaurant, they had one of their minor flirting/foreplay-esque "disagreements" (hardly worthy of the term), and in general they just enjoyed themselves together. However, older-Hannah was dreading the night, knowing that the younger version of herself was basically doomed to ask for sex as "a finish to this wonderful dream". She knew she was doomed to say something that sounded so _unbelievably cheesy_—cheesy to the ears of any outsider, later self included—because it was a line burned into her memory from the reviewing of the memory of that day, which she'd thought through several times while stuck in the past, trying to figure out what exactly happened. Now that she knew, she was NOT impressed with herself, but Xavier on the other hand…

Her contraceptive implant had only been fired up once, when she'd first gotten it , and she'd forgotten to reset it after it turned off automatically five years later, so after some unprotected sex (ACU pilots are regularly tested for all diseases, so they both knew the other had clean bills of health)… he went and got his ACU blown up and she was landed with her boys, as she'd thought the war was winding down and it would be nice to have a baby with him afterward anyways. After he "died", she decided to spend her energy on work and taking good care of her children, so she hadn't bothered resetting the damned thing. It seemed it would come back to bite then-her in the ass again now… It was also why later-Hannah, after going back in time, checked the damned thing not every 5 years but every 2 years and sent the order through her implants to reset the 5-year countdown every 2 years. She'd gotten a bit paranoid about it.

Hannah, after pulling the Legendary Commander away to give herself some privacy while they both tried very hard to not pay attention to the noises they were picking up distantly—seemed Hannah wasn't concerned with activating the sound dampening fields when thinking it was all a dream—returned after knowing they were finished. She let the Legendary Commander be responsible for waking him up. "Come on, it's time to leave her, at least for now." She said quietly, urgently, trying to screen the noises from Hannah's perception as much as possible with her psychic powers, before ghosting out of the room and almost shutting the door behind her, leaving the same sort of tiny gap that had originally been there. Teleportation would have left a noisy pop of displaced air, and they couldn't have that…

Xavier nodded silently before starting to extricate himself from where he was more or less spooning Hannah. She stirred and opened one sleepy eye to see him pulling his clothes on "I…" She sighed "I suppose this is it? You have to leave now?" She rolled onto her back before sitting up, holding the blanket up over her chest with one hand.

He sighed, looking her briefly before turning his eyes away from her depressed orbs "…I'm sorry, Hannah, if there was a way I could stay with you…" He balled his fist before relaxing it and sighing through his nose "I would, but it's not possible, it's just not possible."

Her eyes started brimming with tears as he turned away to pick up his armour, beginning to don and reactivate it. It was the old design she'd last seen him alive in, a design almost twenty-five years old… "Why isn't it? If you can come… barging into my life like this after so many years, and do all this stuff with me, me included" trying to crack a pun didn't help… "why can't you stay for a while instead of leaving like you did every other time? I wish this dream didn't include you having to leave again, waking up alone to realize that it was a dream, the way it used to be, is easier than this…"

_Those times that I thought were just mad musings of a mind trapped in itself were real to her, at least in her mind?_ Templar Fran stiffened before he could set two parts of his chest plate in place to activate and seal together "you know I hate seeing you cry…" He brought up the hand that didn't have an armoured glove on yet and brushed away the couple tears that had begun making their way down her face, ignoring how his eyes felt a bit wetter than normal. Her tears stung somewhere inside him like rubbing salt on a wound, and the knowledge of what would happen to her weighed on his chest even after he'd been convinced that this was all so that she would exist in the first place. "We'll be together someday, if you still want me when that someday comes. I'll be back with you someday soon, I promise, although if you ever show up where I am, I will be very upset with you."

"It's okay, Xav, I don't do dying anyways… I'll see you soon I guess, when you come back?" She knew it was a lie to herself as soon as she said it, she was just being stupid and deluding herself again. Why couldn't she just forget it all and get over him already? Was it because she'd willingly borne his children and couldn't find anything wrong with him as a person other than the fact that he was _dead_ and _gone forever_? She really sounded stupid, this was one of the reasons she hated relaxing herself too much, she tended to sound like an overdramatic moron…

"Yes, yes you will…" He leaned down and kissed her on the lips, soft and lingering, before pulling away and leaving the room.

"Thanks." Hannah said as she watched the holographic footage of the room from the camera she'd planted during the night. Commander T'Soni had just passed her a bag of popcorn, and they were now munching away. "You know, I guess he delivered on his promise…" she scowled "if a freaking three and a half decades of subjective time is 'soon'. He might as well put a Trademark symbol in superscript after the word…" She watched herself on the screen, earlier-Hannah was staring at the door for a few minutes before grabbing the pillow from Xav's side of the bed, moving over there, and hugging it to herself while she began to practically cry herself to sleep.

"Lighten up a bit, Hannah, that scowl's not good for you. Anyhow, didn't you say it was a century?"

"I was exaggerating because I was angry at him for getting me pregnant again… damn I should go get him before he does something stupid that I don't remember him doing." Hannah put down the bag of popcorn, swiped her card and entered the front door of the bungalow, still under full cloak and stealth, spotting Templar Xavier Fran standing in front of her past self's bedroom door. He had his ear pressed against it with a deep frown on his face as he listened to her soft sobs, and his hand moving toward the doorknob again, which she didn't remember and therefore needed to prevent. "Time to go, Xavier." Commander T'Soni had come to a similar conclusion and followed Hannah, whispering before she could speak.

"Why can't we tell her everything? Maybe Hannah was just lying to you when she said I didn't come wither her and wasn't there for her… and by your explanation I can't change our son dying because you're here right now, so it's not like I can damage the past." Xavier demanded quietly once she'd led him outside. "At least that way I can be there to help her through being separated from the Network she's known all her life."

"I don't think I lied to her, Xav." He jumped and looked around before tapping some buttons on his armour trying to scan for the woman he realized was the cause of the odd feeling somewhere in the back of his mind that had been there all day. She dropped the cloaking and active stealth, then dropped both active and passive camouflage. "Although I don't appreciate you bridging between our minds without telling us, while his body was in stasis, even if I happened to enjoy those—I suppose they'd still be dreams technically—greatly." She looked pointedly at Commander T'Soni, who had the good nature to scratch the back of her head sheepishly.

"Hannah?" He looked as if he couldn't believe his eyes.

She nodded, smiling "Yep, it's me, finished with dealing with the past and now returned to handle the future."

He smiled and had opened his arms to pull her into a hug when he frowned, lowering his arms and turning the corners of his mouth downward in an unhappy expression "…How many years of isolation did I sentence you to?" He asked quietly.

"About seventy subjective years thanks to time-distortion technology." He closed his eyes and his shoulders slumped "Hey, at least I'm about half your subjective age now, and I'm about the same subjective age as one of our prospective daughters-in-law… Don't worry about it, I don't blame you for any of it. In fact, I'm happy that Time made it so that we Cybrans still exist, aren't you happy for that too, for me being born in the first place?" _I almost feel bad guilt-tripping him like this._ "Oh, and I know the knowing consent is a bit late, but I'd like to say that I fully consent to you ensuring my existence back there." She gestured back at the house with a chin-flick and eyebrow-wag.

He stood a bit straighter at that "You don't hate me for what I did to you _twice_ now? Abandoning you to raise our children alone like that?"

She spread her hands in a shrug, combining a furrowed brow with a smile, yielding body language perfectly reflected by her next words "Why the hell would I? You didn't exactly _abandon_ me either time, actually, since that terms suggests you did it voluntarily. The rest of us never would have made it off that damned rock if you hadn't volunteered to hold the line while we went ahead with the operational objectives and then retreated one by one through the Gate. Now, we need to get you briefed on the current galactic state of affairs, Commander, will you do the honours?"

"Certainly." She teleported them to the planet's CGC (Central Gate Complex), where they boarded a typical interplanetary gating bus, this one to Procyon, and took up a compartment of their own.

This turned out to be a very good thing for temporal continuity, because after Templar Fran read the briefing documents to all he'd missed in his twenty-three years (minus five days) of being out of action, his first response was quite loud and would have alerted past-Hannah their presence if they'd still been next to the resort house. "Why didn't you brief me on this the night before last, Commander? This is really damned important!"

Commander T'Soni had snorted at him and replied, quite simply, that "We needed to get more pressing matters over with first."

"We didn't tell you right away mostly because past-me is supposed to be returning to Procyon on the morning of the 11th, now that I got a one-day leave extension, and she's due to head out through that Gateway in the afternoon." Hannah said grimly. "Now that we know the first attempt to use the gate we set up on the other end isn't going to quite work out when transiting through Slipspace and Mass Effect tunnels, we still need to put someone on the other end to set things up while we deploy the series of connecting Gates between the two Galaxies. It's the first Intergalactic Gate Network effort, but since we have a stable, fully known target it shouldn't be too hard, now that we've managed to dig the public mindset out of entrenchment, we can bring to bear the military/industrial might that really matters. It should be a matter of mere years or even months before the gate ladder is complete, but we should send someone ahead to make sure we don't build our way into the territory of any locals. No need to upset them, according to the leaders of the Coalition."

* * *

_Outreach Station, Galactic West Border of UEF Territory, March 11, 3872_

This construct was practically set on the closest point in the Milky Way to Andromeda… or such was Hannah's personal thoughts as General Hall (finally stepped down from President back to UEF Supreme Commander, Hackett was grateful for the break) spoke to her "So after you go through to the receiving gate we had drones set up on the other end, lay low and conduct reconnaissance and base-building operations near the landing zone. Support will probably take many months before it can arrive in significant quantities, before we can set up a decent long-ranged gate network, even with orbital gates configured for long range, it's a hell of a lot of gates to set up." The Milky Way was 100,000 light-years across. A Quantum Gate configured for long range with a receiving gate could span about 5,000 light-years reliably. Without a receiver down-to-the-millimetre gating to a target area was only doable up to about 500 light-years range regardless of transmitter gate configuration.

The Andromeda Galaxy, the nearest spiral galaxy to the Milky Way, was about 2,550,000 light-years away. This meant 510 gates would be needed in between to establish a bare minimum link. In reality, the number of gates they were planning to put up was more on the order of 3000 full-sized Interstellar Gates to be put in the middle of nowhere. The reasons they had not tried a similar endeavour in the past included the following:

1) Quantum Gate technology had previously still needed improving before it would be possible to set up reliable gates without a gravity anchor like a star or planet.

2) It was considered too risky to put gates around rogue planets or stars as the Gates were considered sensitive technology.

3) There was no lack of habitable worlds in Coalition space, and the older generations wanted to focus more on hardcore technological development before exploration. After all, humanity HAD run into a huge amount of trouble with the Seraphim on that botched First Contact, so the older ones wanted a higher chance of tech superiority or parity to whatever they might encounter. They also factored in the fact that the other groups encountered were not likely to be intergalactic, possibly excluding the Reapers, since otherwise they would have come to the Milky Way before the Coalition could reach out to them. What that meant was that tech superiority was more reliably achievable if it was the Coalition reaching outward and not being reached by others.

Overall, what stopped gate networks being built all over the local group of galaxies within a few decades or centuries at most came down to Lack of Necessity, Fear and Paranoia, and Unwillingness to give the Militaries even larger areas of control.

Hannah nodded to what General Hall was telling her before she lumbered forward in her ACU. As the shallow layer of Slipspace the Gateway operated on compressed space enough relative to "normal" space that direct gate-to-gate deployment had been possible even without using the Mass Relay embedded in that Slipspace, that was what they were doing for the vanguard. Indeed, they'd only used the embedded Relays to study the effects of Mass Effect technology in Slipspace as it was previously thought that mass-less objects in Slipspace tended to disintegrate. However, they'd noted that using a pair of Slipspace Gates to link two Quantum Gates meant spanning vast distances with the QGN connection was perfectly viable even without building a ladder of gates. Still, they planned on building that ladder as they didn't trust the Reaper-built Slipspace Gates.

In the meantime, another Hannah Shepard was watching the live broadcast as her past self moved the _Pillar of Autumn_ toward the key to the Cybran Nation's existence, approached it, and stood in the gate structure as it activated and hurtled her ship into the wormhole… Alarms began blaring suddenly as reading began skyrocketing off the charts or otherwise going berserk. The wormhole's destination coordinates were shifting rapidly and almost randomly, as well as some other variables in its construction…

* * *

_High Orbit over Procyon, March 11, 3872_

Hannah Shepard smirked, almost bitterly, Time had spoken, indeed, but now it was time to introduce her sons to their father before that father had to go do the job their mother would originally have done. Templar Fran had spent the last night and this morning reading up on the shape of the galaxy now, and the new/updated warship types and classes that Hannah had brought to being practically overnight with her return and design submissions, largely by deployment of "ablative armour technology".

"Mom, what are you doing here? Didn't you just go through the Outreach Gateway?" Most of the crew of the _Pillar of Autumn_—kicked off as a safety measure—plus some of their friends were assembled there, and they gawked at her appearing before them moments after being reported missing through a gateway.

"Time travel is a funny thing, going into the past, you have a tendency to come back… if you can make it."

"That explains it." Weapons Officer Thel Lodam clacked his mandibles appreciatively. Of course, when dealing with other Covenant races, and even with Coalition and nowadays Council races, it was generally easier to just do the head-incline thing that was called nodding as a gesture of agreement, even if it was a submissive gesture, simply because there were many different mandible-clacks that had different meanings in Sangheili body language, including agitation, irritation, anger, joy, excitement, etc. It was often hard for non-Sangheili to learn the meaning of the different clacks.

However, there were some odd similarities to the body language of other races, which were attributed to common contact with (or descent from) the Forerunners. For example, two clacks spaced apart akin to a human smacking their lips was generally appreciative unless it involved some attractive females nearby in which case it could be construed as the equivalent of a wolf-whistle depending on the occasion. Two clacks close together with an eye-narrow was generally irritation or challenge (like tapping the base with the bat before batting in baseball), an eye-widening with three clacks spaced widely apart would be translated almost always into "What. The. Fuck." and so on… but this is not the time for a Sangheili body language lesson.

"So, well, Commander T'Soni showed me a little something that helped make sure we in this reality continued to exist, and I feel you should meet him… here he is." She stepped forward and aside and the Templar, now fitted with new equipment, dropped his stealth and cloaking systems. They had been standing so close together that it was obvious Hannah knew the guy was there, so none of the others had commented on the signature behind her that their armour had picked up when she entered the room.

"Dad?" James was first to ask the older man who looked somewhat similar to the two young men. They recognized him from holograms that their mother had shown them.

"Hello, James, John… I…uh… am your father." _They shouldn't be calling me Dad, I was never there when they were younger, I never did things a Dad is supposed to do like change nappies, play with them and give relationship advice._ His gut clenched again at the reminder that he'd missed out on his children's lives, all four children's, if Commander T'Soni was to be believed (and she probably was), lives…

There was a long silence in which the two sons stared at their father, who stared back. But in the end, guilt won out and the father shifted his eyes downward in shame of not knowing his children, he shuffled his feet awkwardly. "Well, um, it's nice to meet you dad, but what exactly did Mum mean, and where have you been the last couple days if you were awakened to help Commander T'Soni ensure smooth time flow?" John asked, also awkwardly "I'm guessing she woke you up the same day she habilitated herself into her old body, March 9th, 3872?"

He nodded quickly, happy they'd found a topic that didn't start with accusations and hatred over the issue of _"You Left Mom"_. They deserved to know the truth… "Yes, yes she did. She, in Crystal form, apparently saved me from my ACU, knocked me out, then put me in a stasis pod until she woke up, then she went to Reach and retrieved me… Then I um, joined your mother at the resort for a day, according to Commander T'Soni and your later-Mum's instructions." _Hey, that's not shifting blame right? Just telling it like it is…_ "We had to make your earlier-Mum think it was a dream, so that she would, after being thrust into the past, give birth to your pre-incarnations, thus eventually—the details weren't completely laid out to me—resulting in Commander T'Soni being motivated by your death" He looked pointedly at John at that and shuddered, imagining his son being killed and feeling a strong surge of protectiveness at even contemplating it "which would result in her eventually joining the Cybran Nation to ensure your lives this time around doesn't turn out as tragically. And after that, well, her existence basically carried the Cybrans through the Infinite War…"

"So basically this is a recursive loop in this general area of time… and the Cybran Nation's victory was assured from the beginning of the War?" James asked after a few moments of stunned collective silence.

"No, it could have gone a different way, but in the end the survival and strength of the Nation as a major faction would have been maintained under either possible outcome." Xavier smiled at the thought, but then his smile faded "After basically raping—"

She cut across him immediately "You HARDLY 'raped' me that night, Xav, don't kid yourself, _I_ asked _you_ for sex."

John and James shared a look before James gestured with his head and John spoke "Okay, Mum, Dad, you can hammer this out later on your own time… Briefing please? Ideally before we are all deeply disturbed?"

"I don't see anything disturbing. Dramatic, maybe, disturbing, no." Jack commented from where she was leaning against the wall, running a hand over the short, recently-grown bristles of hair on her head. She had, surprisingly, turned out to have naturally silver hair like Chakwas did. Then again, she was Aeon, and they were known for all sorts of hair colours.

"Thanks for the input, Jack." Hannah stated rather more firmly than necessary "Basically, I've been getting him caught up on galactic affairs that have occurred in the past twenty-three years in the last twenty-four hours, that's why we had to wait to introduce him to you. Plus it would look suspicious if two of me were in different places at the same time. There are reasons why we take identity theft or attempts a bit too seriously and launch huge, thorough investigations into them."

"Galactic affairs… did you spend some time updating him on your… internal affairs too?" Chakwas commented, looking pointedly at Hannah's codpiece. The doctor had a feeling that if he'd impressed her enough Hannah would probably take him back without reservations, and given how long she believed it had been since Hannah last was intimate with anyone…

There was another brief silence which featured Hannah rolling her eyes and Xavier shaking his head before the older man spoke again "So, uh, I heard you boys followed in your mother's footsteps and decided to settle down early? I'd like to meet my future daughters-in-law sometime if possible before I have to go through that Gateway… but your Mom said they're not here at the moment, you have pictures of them, right?" Hannah had said that they were out for work or visiting family. Xavier had a feeling it was part of why Commander T'Soni had chosen this time frame to reawaken.

"Yes, Dad… and don't protest over us calling you that, you showing that you care is enough to warrant us calling you Dad instead of Father." The twins were finishing each other's sentences by the end of that. Then they happily produced some holograms of the women they were with.

Templar Xavier Fran's mouth opened wordlessly, then shut, he closed his eyes, sighed, and finally spoke "I have a feeling… that I really shouldn't be surprised. Like your mother, you went for exotic mates, though this is a bit further than just the Aeon-Cybran divide, about eighty times further." They all knew he was referring to the hundred thousand years of relative isolation between the three sister species versus the approximately 1250 years of the Aeon Illuminate's existence. "Still, as long as you're happy together, I'm completely behind it."

"I hate to interrupt, Templar, but it's time we went to haggle with the Coalition leaders to allow you to lead the expedition through the gate. Even though I don't think it'll take very long, it's still going to take a bit of time to prepare whatever ship we should happen to take there for departure. Also, I think you might want some time to talk to Hannah in private before you have to part ways again. Say goodbye to your sons and we'll be on our way."

Commander T'Soni had just come back from Outreach Station and was standing by to teleport the two to the Procyon Primary CGC so that they could gate to Outreach. The gateway through the Slipspace tunnel put there by the Reapers was a one-to-one construction, because they didn't think it was safe to make it more than that. There were also hundreds of strategic missile silos of all classes (just in case the enemy figured out how to counter the most popular type of warhead, the type fitted to the Yolona Oss) constructed on the station and around the gate, which sat some distance away from the station itself. They would blow the crap out of the gate and the associated "Slipspace Gate" as they'd begun calling it if any threats tried to come through…

After an exchange of goodbyes and hugs among the members of the just-reunited family, Commander T'Soni teleported the parents away. "Well, let's get started in preparing the expedition. Don't worry about him, Hannah, he's in good hands. Specifically, I will be heading out with him. There are some things that must be put right…" The woman's expression darkened "…And some ancients that have lost their way who need a _very_ rude awakening."

* * *

A/N: Which warship should they bring as the first ship into the Andromeda Galaxy? VOTE ON PROFLE POLL! (It'll be up there for a long time to receive your votes.)

_Pillar of Autumn_ (Already a modified Heavy Destroyer, but revamped to new standards by Hannah, after all, when trapped in the past, you got to pass your time somehow…): a good compromise between firepower, mobility and protection. Relatively unimpressive, thus able to not draw as much attention form the locals… at least in the beginning.

_Vessel of a New Warship Class_ (e.g. 3872 Battle Cruiser or Fleet Carrier) of Hannah's design: Locals take them slightly more seriously than they would the _Autumn_, but they also have more raw firepower to throw around and are of a size fully comparable to the _Sharlins_. However, either choice will still result in the construction of a fleet.

Also, please vote for one of two BACK-UP OPTIONS (Reinforcements, to be called if truly necessary):

_Ascendant Justice_ (heavily modified Covenant Super Carrier): at 27 kilometres in length, it is 3.375 times as long as the _Babylon 5_ station. _EXTREME_ Armament, Protection and (this is the vast majority of its non-plasma-projector firepower) Fighter Payload. This is if they want to basically cow the locals completely at any point, just call it out of where it's hiding in deep space and… yeah. I wouldn't use this as a primary, as it wouldn't make for a very good story, mostly because very few factions would be willing to start a war for technology with a ship more than 15 times larger than their largest (length-wise) warships. The only ships which could possibly engage this vessel without getting instantly raped would be the Vorlon and Shadow planet-killers or Yonji Sinhindrea battleships, and those would not be able to keep up in mobility. Note that back in the Covenant War Coalition ships relied on overwhelming numbers to overcome Super Carriers, and of course focusing fire on specific areas of the ship as the shields were originally arranged in discrete, overlapping bubbles instead of the configuration now fitted to the _Ascendant Justice_. Note that they'll still build a fleet over there from Ship Gantries.

_No initial backup_: Build fleets from scratch over there by assembling a ship gantry first and then cranking out warships, once it has become certain that no support will be coming from home for at least a year or so.

This story is, from this point forth, officially on hiatus while I work on other projects and of course wait for StarCraft 2 to get finished.

REVIEW!


	3. Preparing For Departure

A/N: I have never watched Babylon 5, that being said, I mainly consult AlbertG's A Universe of Change series of fanfics for information on Babylon 5, in addition to Wikipedia…

Speaking of Wikipedia, compared to the Psi-Corps page on Wikipedia, basically the whole Aeon population would be classed as P12 or higher with my description of the Aeon populace… telekinesis, mind-speaking to even non-psychics WHILE TALKING TO OTHERS, and scanning and level gauging for other telepaths are all _ubiquitous_… among over a _trillion_ people. And Commander T'Soni's race, though she is the strongest known specimen, well they'd probably be described as "P30" or something based on the power levels normal individuals command (calculations for Commander T'Soni's maximum single-attack output, which is orders of magnitude higher than typical for her kind, listed below).

I know I said this was on hiatus, but it will get occasional updates. For the record, **Nenfaer**, the Coalition Fleet is the largest and has warships with all weapons types. The Factions each have their own defensive fleets following their own design principles and arsenals. If they wanted they could build four factions in their new AO no problem (other than crew shortage). I PM'ed you about how Covenant are not quite useless. **As for "fly this little one in"… The **_**Ascendant Justice**_** would like to communicate to you the fact that it is not impressed with you calling it that.**

I put an image of the Babylon 5 and Covenant ship size comparisons up on DeviantArt (hope FFN's link screening won't be as bitchy with my new methods): guardian54 (put a period here) deviantart (put a period here) com (forward slash here, then a pound or number sign, then another forward slash here) d5p5grn

* * *

Chapter 3: Preparing For Departure

_Previously…_

"_Well, let's get started in preparing the expedition. Don't worry about him, Hannah, he's in good hands. Specifically, I will be heading out with him. There are some things that must be put right…" The woman's expression darkened "…And some ancients that have lost their way who need a very rude awakening."_

* * *

_High Orbit over Procyon, March 11, 3872_

"What do you mean by that? Are they as bad as…" Hannah began.

Commander T'Soni's red eyes _literally_ flashed with anger "They are a LOT worse than the Monitors tasked with babysitting Azeroth and Earth II, they interfere and restrict the younger species in what they believe to be their space in every respect. One race, the Vorlons, have even used genetic memory engineering to make the younger races see them as holy beings of light and the other race, the Shadows, as evil. The Vorlons are exploiting a small time loop of one thousand years to win their previous war with the Shadows, who are about ready to strike again. We currently hold tech superiority over all of the factions in that region of space, or rather, superior combined military-industrial might. It is therefore our duty to the universe to clean house and liberate the pawns. The Vorlons and Shadows have been disputing over control versus chaos being better for development for many millions of years, and hundreds of races have been driven extinct by the two groups throwing them at each other in a game of We Are Right, or, as we call it, WAR."

"Damn…" Hannah whistled "Old races that have lost sight of their duty to the younger ones… I wish I could go on this mission to knock some sense into them. You are a batter Commander than I, Commander T'Soni, why don't you stay here instead to annihilate the Reaper race?"

"There are some occasions which you wouldn't be able to handle, like when it comes time to shine light into some Shadows. A possible future I have foreseen results in the current Vorlon ambassador, who is a fairly nice guy and actually cares a bit for the younger species, dying and being replaced by an asshole. I have the combative ability to tear the Shadows to scraps of carapace before they could hope to touch him. You, on the other hand, do not." Commander's T'Soni remained stony as she summoned a glowing plasma ball over her hand, surprisingly radiating very little light from its containment field despite the amount of energy Hannah's HUD was attributing to it. That power level was more than enough to flash-cook and vaporize Hannah's body at this distance if she'd stood there unprotected and it radiated at a more natural brightness for a plasma ball of that energy level, instead, it was dim enough to look at with the naked eye. It winked out of existence as Commander leeched its energy back into her stores without apparent effort.

"So why am I going?" Xavier spoke up from where he was standing.

"There are many stupid humans there who will be uncomfortable dealing with a non-human like me." She tapped the gem at the base of her sternum with one finger. "Before you ask, it was a Forerunner ship that fled through a wormhole in this area to try to escape the Halos firing. They had genetic samples from Earth humans of the time, and remixed it with Forerunner DNA to form the humans over there, much like how the Forerunners interbred freely with a re-established local human population on Earth after the Halos. They found an Earth-like system and reconstructed the habitable planet to their liking. The Vorlons did the rest of the solar system modifications when one of their long-range probes sent toward the Milky Way miraculously began working, which they didn't expect. It let them imitate your history until the late twenty-first century, which was when you guys accidentally destroyed the probe… shortly after it stopped working on its own."

She whipped around toward Xavier "By the way, Templar, this is classified information, but that colony fleet that disappeared in the early Quantum Age, before nanolathing was invented, but trying out the first Quantum Drive, was responsible for ensuring this bit of temporal continuity. They popped into the middle of nowhere roughly one hundred and ten thousand years before present and founded the Forerunner civilization, so basically everyone on that fleet, well, they were their own ancestors, and practically every other human or near-human race's ancestors. I suspect it will be a nasty shock for the locals over there to be truly enlightened by how much they are all related, particularly for the Centauri and Minbari."

Some gaping from the other two later, she continued rather cheerfully "Besides, I need someone to man the ACUs while I direct the fleets, or alternatively you can control the fleets while I man the ACUs, even though we'll have a crew coming with us, it will still be good to have two experts on the scene. Is that all?" He nodded "Unless you have any questions, Hannah, I'll leave you two alone to talk over some things, and, if you feel like it, there's a bed over there." She pointed it out.

Hannah facepalmed, it seemed dropping the _Pillar_'s anti-teleportation shielding systems wasn't a good idea with Commander T'Soni around, they were in her quarters, something which Hannah really should have seen coming. "No, Commander, you can stay if you'd like, it might have been seventy years for me since the last time I had a guy, but that's irrelevant at the moment. Although, I do need to talk to you, Xav, about our relationship status."

"I'll see you guys when you reach the Primary Bridge then." The Commander lifted off the floor a bit and hovered her way over to the door before exiting. It would be somewhat later when Xavier Fran began to regret not asking about the humanoid races in the sector of Andromeda they were inserting to.

"So, uh, what did you want to talk about?" Xavier asked after a few minutes of silence.

"Past-me wasn't completely honest with you about some things, for example, you weren't the only guy she's been with, unlike how things were before you… uh… went missing." She fidgeted a bit.

He relaxed visibly, it wasn't as bad as he'd been expecting… "Well that's good for her then, I suppose, although I do feel a bit jealous of the lucky bastard… Although, she didn't seem to have made much progress in getting over me by the time she went back."

"I was being depressed on the second anniversary of you going missing when Ariel found me sulking and decided I needed to get laid again, especially because the kids were staying with Jane that day…" She said quietly, not looking at him.

"That's a sign of a good friend…" He nodded agreeably, even though something was curdling inside his chest at the thought of Hannah being with another man.

"So, she took me to her place after I complained that I didn't want to just pick up some random pilot in a bar, since I was high enough in rank that I couldn't trust them."

"And… did she have someone over at her place who she wanted to introduce to you?" Xavier tilted his head in inquiry "It better be someone decent, because if he hurt you, I'm going to find him and kill him after I come back from this mission." He snorted at himself "I know, famous last words, talking about coming back and all…"

"She suggested a threesome, actually." He stared with his mouth hanging open "Yeah, that was Eric's reaction too, before he spluttered something about you being his friend and how, and I quote this, 'the Bro Code forbids it'. I was pretty annoyed at him until he shut up and just watched when I pulled Ariel in for a kiss, after she smacked him upside the head. I suppose I found out why they'd asked Jane to take care of Ashley for that day, since Ariel said they were considering inviting me over that day already. Ariel was right, experimenting is fun, I figured out that I'm not homophobic that night."

"I'm not sure whether to congratulate Eric, given he introduced us to each other in the first place and he managed to be in bed with both of you at once, or to punch him for being upset at the idea of bedding you. Right now, the fact that he was actually upset about the prospect of having sex with you is making me more inclined to punch him for being so offensive." Xavier growled darkly before holding up a hand. "Don't say it, Hannah."

She ruffled his hair affectionately and grabbed his hand. _Still as nice a guy as I remembered, although we both know full well he's feeling really jealous, he's not showing it much._ "You never did well with praise… and I'm glad you're not too angry… If I knew you were still…"

"Well, I was dead to you for quite some time, Hannah, it's good to move on, and at least it's with someone you trusted… hell, I actually trust them, if you were going to be invited to a threesome, they're the best ones I can think of. Eric was my friend for about half a century before I introduced him to Ariel… and he introduced us to each other after hanging out with Ariel and you for long enough, he's trustworthy. I'm…" he frowned "_almost_ glad you chose to be with them after I left your life. Is there anything else that you'd like to get off your chest?"

"No, nothing that matters now or in the future, Xav…"

"Anything about your time in the past that you think is worth sharing?"

"Well, I want you to be with me when I meet our grandchildren for the first time again." Hannah wore a hopeful smile and squeezed his hand.

He raised his eyebrows "Are you saying…" She could basically feel the hope and happiness rolling off him in waves.

She snorted "Xav, I'm guessing you're a bit too used to letting your guard down near me… you're broadcasting your joy a bit too loudly. I'm thinking that if, after the Reaper War is over, if you haven't found anyone over there and if I'm still here and not sent off on some new mad mission right away, maybe we could restart our relationship?" We've both changed a lot, resuming isn't going to work. Restarting on the other hand…

"You do mean restart, right? Not resume?"

Hannah blinked "Yes, why do you ask?" _Although I have an inkling as to why…_

_I think she knows why I'm asking, and it's probably the right reason, still, better make sure…_ "You've got so many more life experiences under your belt that it wouldn't be fair to you if we took it up from where we left off. I'm also going to have changed quite a bit, so it wouldn't be fair to _us_ to just resume our relationship where we left off."

"Are you sure you can't breach my mental defences and the brutal personalized firewalls I have? I'm starting to think I might have given your psychic signature authorization to access my thoughts…" _Probably shouldn't tell him right now that his elder son's lover is never going to be granted full firewall access unless John wants her to fry his mind…_

He shook his head "No, at least I don't think you ever gave me access to anything past the Aeon melding level… and that was temporary access, never tried penetrating deeper. Still remember the sort of codes and algorithms entering mind the last time you did your best to synchronize with me even though I'm not Cybran." He had a wide grin on his face as he tried his best to look perverted, thinking about a couple nights ago, well, for him, that is.

She smiled and shook her head fondly "I guess we still think alike, even after all these years… I suppose we'll see each other again just before you leave on your mission?" She pulled him toward her and stepped closer herself, wrapping her arms around him and leaning her head against his shoulder pauldron, facing his neck. "Be careful, okay, Xavier Fran? I've already lost you once, I don't want to lose you again." There was a comfortable silence after he nodded to her before she said something to break the sudden ambient tension "I sound—"

"I think—" Xavier had began at the same time then stopped "You go first."

She raised an eyebrow and looked into his eyes "You sure?"

He smirked a bit "Yes."

"Okay… I sound like I'm trying to pick up our relationship from more where it used to be than the beginning."

He stared, opened his mouth, shut it, then took a breath in and spoke "I was about to say that I thought this wasn't something we should be doing under what you said about restarting our romantic relationship from the beginning."

"We really do think alike…" She smiled. "I have a feeling this restart is going to boot up much faster than we originally did." He chuckled warmly at that typical Cybran phrase, patting her on the back and burying his nose in her long, smooth black hair. "One last thing, Xav, for when you go…" She pulled back to look him in the eyes. "If you find anyone else you're attracted to, feel free to make a move on them, okay?" Her rolled his eyes at her and she pouted for a moment before resuming with "Unless the pace of things over there is comparable to the pace of things over here, in which case… focus on staying alive, alright?"

"You don't need to worry about me, Hannah, if it's not to protect you… I'm not going to put myself in the path of real danger. Besides, I don't think the Legendary Commander would bring me back only to let me die, at least, not nearly so soon. And didn't she tell us before that things over there move at a generally slower pace?"

"Alright, well, I expect you to still be alive at the end of your mission. You owe me that much, at least."

"Of course, Hannah, although for the record, if you have feelings for someone else, you should act on them too, because when I come back from this assignment, I'm going to do my best to not lose you to anyone else." His voice had become a bit husky by the time he finished. Then, after looking into each other's brown eyes for a few moments, they seemed to mutually agree that it was time to part.

Releasing their arms from around each other, they shuffled back a little from each other. "So, do you want a tour of this ship?" Hannah asked, smiling.

He smiled back and raised his eyebrows "A tour? I'm quite sure I'm supposed to be preparing for my mission right now…"

"I've arranged with Doctor Brackman to have you either take this ship or a Battle Cruiser I brought with me as part of the Black Fleet that has been assembled over the centuries by me. I streamlined ship production processes quite a bit with my spare time in the past to spend working away on the issues, and added some new technologies like ablative armour, sheathed skeletons, and some other design improvements to boost damage tolerance. So that's why I want you to take a tour, decide if you want this ship I've had with me for the last seventy subjective and… a lot of objective years."

"Hannah, just tell me how many years, objectively." He pressed.

"Well, I didn't quite go back to see who Jesus might have been, but I did see the Song dynasty of China fall…" She caught his look "about three thousand years." He winced at that. "It's fine, I learnt lots of things, and you know what they say about us Cybrans… we generally love to learn new things." They shared a small, warm smile at that, before he responded with.

"Understood, Hannah… I guess we should start the tour? Commander T'Soni wants to leave this afternoon… Wait, if we're sending only one ship and not a fleet of shipyards, there's a limit to the approximate size or mass of what we can send through?"

"Well, no, however, we believed it would be better to send a quick, manoeuvrable, easily concealed ship, like our capital ships, through initially, unlike the slow and ungainly Ship Gantries. After a few weeks over there building up in interstellar space, it wouldn't matter if we'd sent a fleet of hundreds of ships or not, and less things can go wrong with a small diplomatic party than a large one."

"Well, I suppose that makes sense…"

* * *

_Starboard Hangar Bay, Pillar of Autumn, High Orbit over Procyon, March 11, 3872_

"Well, let me introduce you to the crew that we plan on sending with you." Hannah told him as they reached the second last part of the tour, after the holo-decks, power cores, agricultural facilities, food stasis sector, medical bay, science labs, armoury, firing range, secondary bridge, ACU Gate Room, and so on, but before the primary bridge. It was the starboard-side hangar bay, with racks upon racks of aerospace superiority craft arranged next to them in a stack that reached the very tall ceiling. Spaceships didn't use the quantum storage used in tactical-scale "Carriers" (naval or CZAR), since the amount of damage done to a hull when the storage collapsed was generally enormous and made the hull unsalvageable. They used a quicker cycling mass-launch mechanism instead, with mechanical storage. After all, Coalition ships were wide for good reasons… to accommodate multiple rows of stored columns of aircraft racks.

He nodded as they went through the airlock doors to the hangar bay, with the opposite wall's launch slots closed, as expected. "Okay, they'll probably be quite nice to work with given you worked with them."

"Oh yes, and quite a few of these people we're sending with you, like Kelly, Miranda and maybe Jack, are more attracted to your sons than they probably should be, and will probably lust after you too. If the mission ends up taking a damned long time and you want to, uh, fraternize, I sure won't be stopping you, might even think it's hot." Hannah winked at him teasingly. He rolled his eyes at that. "So here we have the roster at this moment, you can request more crew members if you'd like. People, this is Templar Xavier Fran, in charge of the Andromeda Venture, any questions so far?" Hannah, after turning off the sound-dampening bubble around the two of them, marched to stand next to the small row of people, who stayed silent, and began at one end. "Kelly Chambers, psychologist, secretary, and nurse when needed." The young redhead snapped a salute, suited in Aeon Light Armour—Light Armour was standard equipment of non-front-lines military personnel now, after the Covenant War.

Xavier tried to not eye her suspiciously as he shook her hand "Nice to meet you, Kelly."

Her response was that "It is a pleasure to meet you, sir, the Commander certainly has good taste in men." Kelly looked past Xavier to Hannah.

"Are all your crew this informal?" Xavier asked his ex(?).

"You try living on a tub with about twenty people and you get tired of honorific terms rather quickly. Unless it's a combat situation or an important occasion i.e. I order them to be serious, they're usually quite casual, which is good."

Xavier nodded and smiled at the young Aeon woman "Agreed, it's a good thing to be friends first and colleagues second."

"Thel Lodam, fleet coordination officer and official Sangheili representative on this venture." The Sangheili inclined his head respectfully.

"A male chosen for a mate by such a powerful and strong female must have been a great warrior, one chosen to father her offspring, even more so, you have my respect for that, Templar."

"I will have to earn the rest of your respect then." Templar Fran smiled back at what he interpreted as a grin from the Sangheili, who was quite a bit taller than him. "I look forward to doing so." They exchanged a nod.

"Jacob Taylor, Armoury and Agricultural Officers, also trained for Science Labs work, biotic-capable." Hannah indicated the dark-skinned man with a wave of her hand.

"Good to meet you sir, I have heard many stories of you." The black man shook Xavier's hand.

"I'll just have to match up to those expectations over in Andromeda then." The Templar nodded at the UEF man (identifiable by the upper arm Factional Patch on his clothes).

"Kasumi Goto, your best infiltrator, trained for Science Lab work, your best humanoid close combat specialist." She indicated the Cybran. "She can steal basically anything, and is one of your two hacker choices."

"Greetings, Templar." The violet-eyed woman said simply, her indigo hair tucked into her armour's neck as usual, proudly wearing the red Cybran logo on her Factional Patch.

"Greetings, Kasumi." They nodded before breaking the handshake.

Hannah continued along the line "Mirala, Asari representative on your crew, not official since she's an Ardat-Yakshi, and you can consult our files on them after you get over there and begin initial operations. She's the highest-powered, on average, Biotic you'll have on-crew." _I have a feeling he'll be angry at me for not telling him about Liara until he sees that Cybran firewalls offer immunity…_

They shook hands "I have a feeling the humans over in Andromeda are going to be quite surprised by you."

She smirked and replied "We'll see, there are probably some more Forerunner-descended races with skull modifications over there than here, although they'd probably not have a mono-gendered one."

"Miranda Lawson, would probably do well as XO, jack-of-all-trades, Science Officer, your number-two choice for a hacker, biotic-capable."

"Greetings, Templar Fran, your battles were used to teach students, you know."

He snorted but smiled nonetheless as he shook her hand "Yeah, unfortunately. I don't think I was that good, but I guess surviving a century and a half of the War says enough."

"Jacqueline Nought, goes by Jack, when you split into two squads in an infantry fight, she will not be on the same squad Mirala is on, as she's probably the most powerful human Biotic-spec in existence at the moment and occasionally spikes higher. Doesn't care for rules much, which is good when you want to sic hell on your opponent. Trained for science lab work."

The silver-haired (more like stubble at the moment but hey…) ex-convict extended her hand "Hey. Gonna agree with Chambers for once, the Commander really did have good taste."

"Yes, yes I did." Hannah replied with a smile. Xavier had a feeling he shouldn't say anything at the moment, so simply shook her hand and inclined his head in a nod toward Jack before following Hannah as she moved on.

"Jacob and Miranda have C5 clearance for ACU warfare . Kelly, Jack and Kasumi have C4 clearance for ACU warfare, Mirala is a C3, Thel is also ranked at C3… Your last crew member, well, he's an active-duty combatant, but we're not sure what to rank him as… C0 or C1 I'd say. Meet Urz, official Zerg representative on this mission, your best overall close combat specialist, comic relief, a decent chef, and of course a good startle or two for people who aren't used to him, like the people you might need to negotiate with over there. Everyone's an N6 except Kelly."

"Hello there, how are you doing?"

Xavier blinked before speaking "Hello there… You speak English?"

"Yep, didn't expect it huh?" The Devouring One let out some chattering laughter before extending a hand "Sorry, my middle finger tends to be rather, uh, hazardous to put out most of the time, and it's long enough to be considered rude whether or not I intend it to be."

"Okay then…"

* * *

After the tour and comparing the two ship choices, found the aforementioned Commander on the otherwise empty Bridge of the _Pillar of Autumn_, talking to some holograms. "I hope you enjoyed touring the vessel, guys, because I'm busy debating with the Doctor, Presidents, Princess and Arbiter about whether or not we should bring the _Ascendant Justice_ with us. Some of us seem to think we should be prepared for anything, including wild bear-cat hybrids, which I have assured them do not exist on the other side, unless you count… no, they're hardly bear-CAT like beings, never mind. Anyhow, there is nothing over there that we can't handle with conventional weaponry, tactics and doctrine. The fact that I didn't ask them to send a fleet of Ship Gantries should have made them abundantly clear… it's not the unknown that we're sending this expedition off into! I've been there a la astral projection or whatever it was, and I guarantee you I'm not lying as to the state of things on the other side!"

"Commander, no one's saying you're lying, we're just saying it doesn't hurt to be a bit, er… over-prepared." The UEF President said.

"The guys over there have such terrible targeting systems they can't lock onto ships they can optically see. Our ships could sit next to them without even passive stealth, with only passive camouflage, and with everyone's paint jobs" Even the Aeon used an extremely dark green to help their ships blend in, although everyone's paint was designed to be stealthy… "they'd STILL not pick us up unless they felt the gravity disturbance form our mass, assuming we keep inertial manipulators and gravity generators off!"

"Hello, can we butt into this conversation?" Hannah asked, and the hologram heads all turned toward her, nodding.

"I've been telling them that from my wanderings before reclaiming this body, I know the Super Carrier would completely terrify the locals, and it would be total overkill. It would be diplomatically inconvenient and make the locals more resentful and frightened of us instead of staying on the friendly terms we're hoping to meet on." Commander T'Soni was growling, showing pearly white, perfectly straight teeth.

"Why would it cow the locals?" Templar Fran asked Commander T'Soni, but it was another who answered.

"Now that we applied the upgrades they were planning on putting on the ship, plus the massive upgrades you wanted to apply to the design, the length's been extended about a kilometre, it measures in at twenty-eight nine six zero metres long now." Princess Rhianne stated, calm as ever "It is good to see you back among us, Templar."

He bowed respectfully "It is good to see that you are well, Princess."

"Thank you, Templar, as you are the main Commander tasked to this operation with the exception of my old teacher." There were gasps of disbelief from all sides at this revelation "… Although at the time I did not know who she was. I believe you should have a say in this matter. Do you believe the _Ascendant Justice_ will be useful to have as backup in the Andromeda Galaxy?"

"It's almost twenty-nine kilometres of pure ass-kicking power now, the plasma projector complement is still fifty-four projectors, but since they are weapons capable of being used to glass planetary surfaces…" The UEF President tried to sway Xavier to his side of the argument. "It is still a large amount of firepower, good for a last resort reinforcement. Tens of thousands of aerospace craft ready to be deployed in massive swarms at a moment's notice…"

"You will still be expected to construct most of your back-up fleets on-site using Ship Gantries." The Seraphim President stated "The difference is that you will be in lot less danger to begin the mission."

Doctor Brackman snorted in disagreement "According to Commander T'Soni's report, it would be more convenient to keep the _Ascendant Justice_ in the Milky Way to use to fight the Reaper threat when it arrives, since if it is completely overwhelming to the locals, our regular warships will be able to overcome them. Attacking on a one hundred fifty to one ratio with 3872 destroyer or cruiser type capital ships was able to bring down a Super Carrier like the _Ascendant Justice_ without losing more than a hundred of our vessels, since plasma projectors are pulse weapons and not totally continuous beam, and have a pretty long reload cycle. With full starfighter complements involved, we could defeat a Super Carrier on a combat ratio of about fifty to one, and I have every confidence that Templar Fran will muster enough warships via Ship Gantry quick enough to make the _Ascendant_ unnecessary as support. Should the gateway be destroyed or otherwise cut off, we will be unable to bring it back here to help in the war against the Reapers, and the Covenant has only a handful of Super Carriers left to throw into the war effort…"

"Doctor Brackman, may I remind you that most of your Super Carrier kills during the Covenant War were via use of your strongest non-planet-killer weapon, the Yolona Oss missile launcher, exploiting the fact that back then the shields were arranged in discrete bubbles over the vessel's sections?" Arbiter Thel Vadam argued. "In fact, most often you relied on a strike amidships to break the spine of the ship with sheer concussive force to destroy the hull integrity and make the remaining parts fall prey easily to massed capital ship fire. What if an enemy encountered in what you call the Andromeda Galaxy has technology to balance against such capital strikes or that type of warhead? The only other alpha strike able to badly damage a Super Carrier's shields is a full plasma projector volley from another Super Carrier executing a barrel roll while firing its projectors toward a specific section of another Super Carrier's shields."

Interestingly, Covenant shields were designed to vastly resist Covenant weaponry, otherwise, with respect to how damage would otherwise factor with yield for the hardened shields that had been observed in all technologies seen thus far (logarithmic damage with firepower), that should have been able to punch through the shields. That tactic, or the possibility thereof, was the number-one reason why the Coalition had never tried to stack up fully with the Covenant in capital ships, as smaller ships weren't worth doing that on and were much more nimble, so any attempt to do it could reasonably be evaded or would totally overkill the target ship, leaving the rest of the battle group unscathed.

"It's also notable that most Covenant ship kills of the war were accomplished using plasma projectors, which were designed to be anti-planetary weapons or against super-heavy targets. Plasma torpedoes just weren't fired in sufficient numbers to defeat Coalition shielding schemes and fighter swarms." Commander T'Soni shot back "Conventional Coalition warships are quite tough enough to withstand Minbari, Shadow or even Vorlon firepower, or, even before that, hide from them or evade them completely with our acceleration levels. Interestingly, one of the factions over there, the Centauri Republic, used illegal mass drivers to bombard an opponent race's homeworld only recently, although they didn't actually work to exterminate the Narn. The others in the area haven't been scared enough to gang up on and destroy them yet, which indicates something is seriously wrong with the unity of that area of space, caused by the Shadows manipulating them with their believe that Chaos breeds strength. The Centauri have a lunatic of an Emperor who will need to be deposed eventually."

"Why should we not eliminate him as soon as possible after arrival?" Thel Vadam demanded "Many worlds of the San'Shyuum rebelled after they learnt of the lies of the Old Covenant, and quite a few have been glassed in the in-fighting. Their race has been harmed greatly by the leadership of a few lunatics. The Centauri you speak of are clearly suffering from the rule of this mad leader, so he should be disposed of as soon as possible!"

"They must do it themselves, growing and learning from the experience. Their people will be much weakened by it, but we will be there to help them get back on their feet and prevent greater damage from the aftermath. Children must sometimes learn by some bumps and scrapes, and is it not enough that someone will be there to prevent them from self-destructing?" Commander T'Soni questioned back. "There are enough races descended from the Forerunners in existence already scattered over multiple galaxies, however far some of them have been genetically modified by themselves or their constructs, like the Asari and my kind respectively, we can afford to let some of them take some damage. However, I will _never_ forgive the Vorlons for what they have done to the Minbari after creating them a la mad modding… Kosh and I have a great deal to talk about, chromosomal restructuring included. I'll also need to speak with Delenn about just how poor of a job the Vorlon Chrysalis did with her DNA, trying to poison mankind over there now that they've already poisoned the Minbari…" It was truly astounding how much you could learn by floating around the universe freely, only limited by how far your imagination could allow you to project yourself to watch, wraith-like, the happenings of wherever and more importantly _whenever_… only having objective time pass relative to your containment crystal when you felt like it. The end result was that she had daunting knowledge of past events, which the Multiverse had allowed her to access without issue, including peeking into other universes that she had spawned in previously. Her species could, even before those events, naturally get the general feel of possible futures and follow them while meditating, which was quite nice. It was also one of the reasons that orphans of her kind were extremely rare at best.

"Well, I suppose since the six important opinions here are evenly split, three for and three against the _Ascendant Justice_ as backup, it all comes down to the Templar's decision." Hannah suggested diplomatically.

Brackman nodded "Agreed."

Thel Vadam clacked his mandibles once by nodding his head sharply "Aye."

The Seraphim and UEF Presidents simply nodded, while Princes Rhianne said "I concur"

Commander T'Soni looked to Templar Fran expectantly "Templar, we want you to decide whether or not to bring the _Ascendant Justice_ with you when you depart in three hours. Also, will you take the _Pillar of Autumn_ as your initial ship or grab one of the new Battle Cruisers Hannah brought with her in what we're calling the Black Fleet?"

The question was whether he would take an extremely powerful warship as backup or not, he sort of wanted to, but Hannah could probably get more use out of it, and having such a mighty vessel could be important to keeping her and their children safe through the Reaper War… Having reviewed the specifications for the Battle Cruiser class of ships, Templar Fran thought it was more powerful and intimidating than the modified Heavy Destroyer that was the _Autumn_, but it was also a bigger target for any locals trying to attack to steal technology. In reality, the only difference between the two was a matter of sentimentality. Was he going to take with him a ship which had been with the love of his life for most of her life, like she seemed to want him to with the look she was giving him, or was he reading her wrong? Perhaps she wanted to keep the familiar vessel she had commanded for many years and upgraded with her own design revamps, and she wanted him to go forth in a powerful warship that she had designed with her own ingenious mind and thus trusted to take care of him?

If these were truly the only important factors that could sway his decision, then he knew what he was going to choose "I believe it would be best if I set out in…"

* * *

A/N: I know this codex entry is mostly copied from The Ardat-Yakshi Chronicles, but I rate it important enough to reiterate here, and it has seen some revision and updates (the Codex works like Wikipedia today).

I also know I got rid of basically everyone in ME 2 but not ME 3 squad with very few exceptions (Jedore, but that's for good reasons).

**VOTE on SHIP and BACKUP in POLL on PROFILE!**

* * *

COALITION CODEX ENTRY: MARINE/ACU PILOT RATING SYSTEM

Most people who have not read this will not understand the rating systems for Marines and ACU Pilots. Those who have, however, will understand what it means to be an N-something or C-something in the Coalition of Species.

Infantry are ranked according to the N system, N0 through N7. N0 is "Combat-Incapable", a classification reserved for those under the age of ten, nine if Cybran, or anyone under one point three meters tall or less than forty kilograms in mass if determining other races. N1 is "Non-Combatant Civilian", a classification for those who have received no official training to handle weapons or armour. These are the two non-fighting ranks of Infantry and are very rare in Coalition space excluding children.

N2 is "Trained Civilian" which means anyone who has been taught to use a weapon and Coalition Civilian Armour. This encompasses effectively the entire Coalition teenage and adult civilian population as of 3871 and is colloquially termed "Reservists". N2s are the reason why businesses typically operate on a three-shift, seven-crew cycle, as one crew is off each week on reservist training in all major factions, this means two crews will handle each shift, with shifts typically rotating, with the day shift weeks (2 weeks in each shift) for crews about to go to or just coming back from training. This system was hammered out between research facilities, the main employers, and other lesser employers and the Cybran Military shortly after the Infinite War began and has proved very efficient even when adopted by the other Major Factions. N2s do not get paid nor have leave, but they are allowed to not show up if it can be ascertained that you are actually absent for medical reasons. Punishment for going AWOL from training involves quite a heavy fine, don't try it. Note that schools have organized training during holidays, but no other interruptions of this type for teachers or students.

N3s are "Reservist Marines", the noncoms and officers of civilian troops in times of need, these people have harsher training, spend weekends in training facilities, and are permitted to authorize use of infantry heavy weapons against targets without having to file too much paperwork afterwards. They are also actually paid for some of their time and have such a thing as "leave". If there's ever not enough Marines, which is hideously unlikely (almost as unlikely as not enough ACU Pilots) these guys are going up into the front lines…

N4s are your typical Marines with typical Marine selections of equipment, customizations, etc. It's more or less a full-time job in that you are always going to be on-call, but the pay is adequate to support yourself and a small family on. Unlike higher ranks you will not be shipped around too much so most N4s also have part-time jobs on the side, mostly in research, which is the largest employer in all Major Factions in the post-scarcity economy that exists in the Coalition.

N5s are the officers among Marines, you can only reach this if you've reached at least a C4 rank on ACU training. However it is actually a more full-time position than N4s and are typically the only job someone will have other than the design and concept work everybody in the military is into anyways. N5s are also unfortunately the most likely to be stuck with desk jobs. N5s may call for direct fire support from ACU pilots, but cannot request indirect fire i.e. T2/T3 Artillery Installation or Missile Launcher strikes, or anything equivalent to or heavier than Battleship fire, without later filing a lot of paperwork and explaining to superiors why they felt it necessary. (Note: This is intended to deter Marines from making unnecessary saturation-fire requests, although when needed it still more than allows for it)

N6s are elite soldiers, with at least C5 ranking in ACU piloting, and are not exactly common, though unlike N7s they are NOT specialized into specific groups, mostly being well-rounded types. They are also unlike N5s in that they will not often be stuck with desk jobs, but they do have a higher tendency to be assigned to strategically valuable but often incredibly boring locations such as field hospitals as guards, that is, when they're not on the front lines commanding soldiers in ACU-inaccessible urban warfare. They're permitted to directly contact ACU pilots for indirect fire help in the field without too much paperwork. However, they are still not permitted to utilize Strategic-level firepower such as T3/T4 Artillery Installations, Tactical and Strategic Missile Launchers, or _Ahwassa_-class Strategic Bombers, at least, not without being swamped by paperwork post-mission.

N7s are more or less the Spectres of the Coalition; they are specialized into classes, have permission to call for fire support of any type (though strategic nukes, especially Yolona Oss strikes, still need a few pages of paperwork) and are the toughest of the tough. N7s tend to be certified to C5 or C6 ranking in ACU Warfare, though some have the power that C7 grants them. No matter how high you want to go, this is it in the Marine Hierarchy, unlike C7 Commanders, you do NOT have the power to speak for your faction or initiate hostilities against another, neutral faction, unless you ARE a C7 commander.

COMMANDERS:

C0 through C7 are the Commander rankings existing in the Coalition of Species.

C0s are untrained, in other words, no certification whatsoever. However, it is worth noting that even the most untrained citizen will typically have played enough ACU simulation video games to be able to fight back another non-Coalition faction's ground forces should he or she be given an ACU and be told to do it. C1 and C2 are trainee ranks, C1 indicates proficiency with non-Experimental/Strategic units and C2 means full unit list but not fully proficient. C3 means that the pilot has learnt all that could be taught within a reasonable timeframe about how to pilot an ACU and how things work, including Strategic Warfare.

C3s are the first ranks actually deployed to the battlefield, in SCUs, to support a more experienced ACU pilot as he or she wages war. These pilots are SOMETIMES shoved straight to ACUs, but this is uncommon and only done for prodigies, such as Hannah Shepard of the Cybran Nation. C3s are also the rank most likely to be stuck behind a desk, and with the least benefits for their labour.

C4s will not often be stuck behind a desk pushing papers, however their responsibilities, often being in trainer positions, fighting battles, and so on often mean they have their own regular paperwork anyhow. C4s are typically last to retreat if a retreat is called, hence their ranking is likened to the ancient plastic explosive of the same designation, a risky position… C4s cannot even deploy, let alone use, strategic missile launchers without paperwork afterward, this is their largest restriction.

C5s are full-on pilots, they are permitted to deploy strategic weapons when necessary with only a few pages of paperwork afterward (will not accumulate if in times of emergency where pilots do not have time to file paperwork, unlike for C4s). C5s have a tendency to be deployed in smaller squads than C4s, sometimes even alone if complete stealth and discretion are required for an operation. If attacked by a formerly neutral party or on a First Contact scenario C5s are expected to shoot to disable, if possible, and are permitted to use conventional weapons, strategic missiles are not permitted in Hostile Contact scenarios without having to explain to several superiors. However, it is worth noting that "X number of civilians would have died otherwise" typically will get you past the superiors if the situation is plausible and not you just adding insult to injury while pounding a hostile raiding group into the dirt.

C6s are typically put in positions of command over other pilots, and are without exception seasoned veterans that have performed very well in previous battles. Usually these include simulator matches, but only matches against C6 or C7 ranking pilots, and simulator matches are only recorded up to when they finish C4, in other words, these are practically all real-combat veterans. Most ACU pilots stop here in their climbing of the ranks. C6s are permitted to defend themselves by any and all means if attacked by a neutral or first contact party, including deployment of strategic missiles. However, they are not permitted to start wars or anything like that.

C7 Pilots are the highest ranking, most powerful, and _by far most gifted_ commanders, there are only a couple from each Major Faction: Supreme Commanders (of their respective factions) Hall and Ratheen, Generals Steven Hackett and Seth-Thauum, Elite Commander Dostya, Division Commander Hannah Shepard, Avatar of War Rhiza, and Grand Crusader Ariel Williams. C7 Commanders are able to speak for their faction and when given agreement from the other leaders for the entire Coalition of Species. Having the power to declare wars if not forbidden by their leaders, they are also licensed to go on the offensive in a Hostile First Contact scenario, though they may choose to forgo this option in favour of waiting for reinforcements so a clear victory can seal the deal for peace. Grand Crusader Ariel Williams has been criticized for being "too touchy and hesitant after the Infinite War to deal with the Turian invasion of Shanxi effectively" to which she responded with "No Aeon these days WANTS to actively inflict many megadeaths per day upon any opponent again!" Recent C7 level clearance has been granted to Templar Xavier Fran for his mission to the Andromeda Galaxy.

END CODEX ENTRY

FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE REFER TO "ARIEL WILLIAMS", "AVATAR OF WAR RHIZA", "XAVIER FRAN", etc.

* * *

**A/N: SOME CALCULATIONS FOR FIREPOWER (may be TL/DR, actual A/N at bottom):**

Things worth noting: Commander T'Soni's highest direct attack (yield-wise) that she can _personally_ fire is a particle beam approximately 2 meters in diameter with energy in the high kiloton range (yield can be multiplied by as much as 9 times if enough time/items are used to maximize synchronicity of long-ranged offensive field projector nodes). This beam can be fired once per ten seconds and has a duration of half a second, travelling at about 100 km/s in atmosphere and fired with reduced overall yield at up to 5,000 km/s when out of atmosphere (reasons shall be explained). Effective combat range is therefore only about 15,000 kilometres even against an Omega class destroyer, with the 3-4g acceleration lack of artificial gravity would limit them to. Assume a base yield of 0.5 megatons TNT equivalent when fired exo-atmospherically, with no modifiers, and an impact area of 3.14 square meters. Against a structural/bio-electric fielded opponent, most of the damage would be absorbed by localized supercharging of the field and, if the bio-electric field overloads and fries while defending, will not continue as the overload wake duration is enough to deflect the beam significantly (does not occur for structural fields). If the target does not move, assuming a pure iron target, this is energetically capable of vaporizing a cylinder of this diameter, measuring around 8 km long, of solid iron that is at near universal background temperature. (25 J/mol-K for solid, 825 J/kg-K for liquid). Given realistic energy absorption and Young's Modulus and all the vaporization amount will be much less, but in regards to penetration it will be _larger_ (jet of hot liquid metal shoots out the other side of the giant block of iron she's shooting at), and the amount of stress on the surrounding armour would be enough to make a sizeable crater.

The main lethal aspect of this against unshielded ships is the tight beam and the small impact surface area. Babylon 5 has an armoured hull described as 8-12 meters thick. If that material has less than 100 times the heat capacity of iron, she would be able to put a hole in the station's outer hull in a single shot, and unless the material has more than 10 times iron's heat capacity, go all the way through the station's diameter even if it was all solid iron. B5 as a franchise has really lethal weapons and really fragile ships and stations, I noticed when looking at the numbers cited (insanity quotient of the weapons yields shall be toned down to more reasonable numbers). The main defences are interceptor grids and evasion, it seems, as armour is practically useless except against starfighter weapons.

The frightening part of this is the fact that a single Heavy Microwave Laser, with an output of "only" ten kilotons per second (technology has been updated!) and a beam diameter of two meters (note: in-atmosphere, this results in highly incandescent air around the beam path), should be able to bore through 1/50th of that per second, or about 160 meters of iron. In other words, Coalition targeting computers and in-flight semi-guidance (for all non-beam weapons) will not be healthy for the receiving end due to how small the impact area is and the lack of defensive energy field/shield technology.

* * *

Actual A/N: In conclusion, you don't need 40 MT/s from the main neutron cannon of a Sharlin to slice an Omega destroyer in half, given the actual amount of material you have to penetrate and force to move (note: forcing a material past its Young's modulus and making it MOVE along with your particle beam is much easier than vaporizing it!) would only necessitate MAYBE something in the 1 MT/s range (still equals very high DPS against Coalition vessels, no laughing matter) if you maintained the contact with the slicing beam for even a significant fraction of a second, FRONTALLY. From the side slicing an Omega in half would need maybe a fifth of that power output, even given a Sharlin's fairly wide cutting beam. Fortunately, Coalition warships today are fare more durable than they were during the Sovereign Incident and further major improvements have been made since the Covenant War to the amount of damage the shields and structural fields can take before failing.

REVIEW!


	4. Through the Looking-Glass

A/N: Replies to reviews at end A/N!

**All Readers**: If you want to see a good argument against bringing the Ascendant Justice, please see Spacebar's review on Ch 3. I couldn't have said it better myself. However, the poll was definitively supporting the Ascendant Justice (16 to 7). The Pillar of Autumn result was closer, but a new class of warship beat it by 2 votes out of 26 (someone voted for two warship options and no backup option). There were 25 voters in total, closed as of Jan 15, 2013. **Sorry, Spacebar.**

Hole in ME Canon: If Mass Effect Shields only react to kinetic projectiles, how do they stop Thresher Maw acid? If they can stop acid, wouldn't they be eroded in a sandstorm? And what about Haestrom's sun, that's radiation i.e. directed energy weapons…? It doesn't compute…

**Warning: "John" on the B5 side i.e. after going through the Gateway, is SHERIDAN, NOT Shepard!**

* * *

Chapter 4: Through the Looking-Glass

_Previously…_

_If these were truly the only important factors that could sway his decision, then he knew what he was going to choose "I believe it would be best if I set out in…"_

* * *

_Now… Primary Bridge, Pillar of Autumn, High Orbit over Procyon, March 11, 3872_

"… A warship you designed, a 3872 Battle Cruiser. And given what you said about the Black Fleet, Hannah, it seems the Ascendant Justice won't make as much of a difference in the Milky Way as we would hope… it might take it a while to reach the landing sector using Warp technology in Slipspace" The number of dimensions in the universe permitted this as an option of travel "But we really should be prepared for anything, as you said." He nodded at the holograms.

"Well then Drakh motherships shouldn't be much of a problem then…" Commander T'Soni muttered. Everyone looked at her and she said "They're a mobile-anchorage-type ship, it would take a while, a short while, to destroy one with conventional Coalition technology, mostly as the thing is damned big, about twice the length of the _Ascendant Justice_."

There were gasps at that and a "An you told us there weren't any threats that needed the _Ascendant_!" from the UEF President.

"It doesn't, our massed capital ships would be able to thoroughly wreck it without trouble. The only thing is that it might take a bit of time to assemble our first Ship Gantry with the engineering capacity, or rather resource generation, of any single ship." Interestingly, Carriers only had full engineering capacity inside their hulls, fixing/building anything outside their hull typically proceeded at about two-thirds maximum engineering capacity, depending on its location relative to the hull, and was even less for construction of capital-ship-sized objects. So, it hadn't mattered much if the Templar had chosen a Battle Cruiser or one of the new Escort Carriers to start in terms of start-up time. Besides, they wouldn't throw themselves into action if it could be avoided until the _Ascendant Justice_ arrived, which would take about a month using the fastest Slipspace drives the Coalition and Covenant could assemble.

"Xavier Fran, we have something to rectify the injustice of you only being a Templar after so many years of skilled, faithful service to the Aeon Illuminate." Princess Rhianne said. "You have been promoted to the rank of Grand Crusader, although Rhiza wanted to stick the rank of Lord Crusader on you, we thought it might not be expedient for you, given your current major mission, to need to deal with being the first Lord Crusader to be named such in peacetime… Still, we're giving you C7 clearance, so in a hostile First Contact, the Aeon Council, UEF Parliament, Cybran Network, Seraphim Parliament and Covenant Council and Senate have all reached consensus on giving you authorization to declare war if needed on behalf of all the major factions of the Coalition and of the Covenant."

"We will provide what assistance we can if or when needed, Grand Crusader, but we believe the _Ascendant Justice_ should suffice." Thel Vadam stated with a mandible-based grin.

* * *

"You know, the locals have a one-track mindset of bigger equalling better." Commander T'Soni commented once they cut the connection.

Xavier shrugged "Well, I believe in quality over size…"

Hannah snorted "You're one to talk, Xav, last I remember, you've got both on your side."

The newly-minted Grand Crusader blinked owlishly at his former lover "When did you start making lewd jokes about us?"

"Well, having one of your sons hitched with someone who's into some, uh, pretty funny stuff, back then… uh, you know, Tali…" Hannah looked at Commander T'Soni as if hoping the other woman would explain.

The green-haired woman snorted "Yeah, James in my rendition was quite amusing, perhaps he inherited being too nice of a guy from his father?"

"I get the impression something is going over my head at the moment." Xavier deadpanned and both females hummed in agreement, but refused to fill him in.

* * *

_High Orbit over Procyon, March 11, 3872_

"Well, I wish you, James, Tali and Liara good luck. I've done all I can, if Crystal wants to keep working to give you guys the happily ever after my Origin wanted, good luck to her too." Commander T'Soni's hologram told them. "Warn Liara however that she won't be able to use a lot of the more powerful attacks anymore, like firing Hyper Beams. I'm not going to be around projecting through her anymore."

John nodded "So you were the one doing all those high-powered moves?" James gave him a look that suggested _when'd you get retarded?_ "Just confirming…"

"Yes, it was me."

John sighed "Liara's going to be a bit disappointed… but she'll figure out ways around it quickly enough."

"I'm sure she will, my Origin was hardly stupid in the incarnation I spun off from, and she's going to also be far from stupid in the current version."

"That she is, Liara, that she is."

Commander T'Soni raised an eyebrow "I get the feeling I should consider a name change so that there's no confusion."

"Well, I'd say all you'd need to do is tack on your species identity or some manner of nickname to distinguish the two of you."

The crimson-eyed woman rolled said eyes "I suppose the first nicknames you're going to suggest are Bluebell and Crimson based on our eye colours? What would you do when I had myself shifted to my second colour palette then?"

"You have another colour palette?"

"Yes. Anyways, since I'm going away for a while, we don't need to worry about this. I just called to let you know Liara's move set is being reduced sharply."

* * *

_Outreach Station, Near Galactic West Border of UEF Territory, Evening of March 11, 3872_

"Just be careful over there, alright?" Hannah fidgeted, again, as the Gemini they were riding in closed distance with their destination, a Battle Cruiser she'd brought with the Black Fleet, the name used for the massive fleet she'd assembled over the years in deep space.

"You know, if you hadn't pushed me away earlier when I tried it, and insisted that I make moves on anyone that catches my eye over there, I'd say you want to cuddle for a bit before we leave." Xavier waggled his eyebrows and Hannah smiled a little, slapping him on the upper arm patronizingly.

"Well, just keep in mind that it'll probably be harder for you to hook up with someone other than from this galaxy than it would be for your sons, Aeon-Cybran crosses are considered quite exotic after all, pure Aeon, not so much, at least over here."

He smirked at her "Ouch, Hannah, I'm almost insulted."

"You know, there are several species who we will have to blow out of the water, or allow to be blown out of the water, Templar." Commander T'Soni interrupted them as they watched the final preparations.

"You know that I am Aeon, and even though I have experience with the idea," Xavier scowled deeply "I by now thoroughly abhor genocide." His eyes flicked momentarily toward the black-haired woman sitting next to him before they fixated on the Legendary Commander again.

"Even of a people who believe themselves the chosen of God and therefore qualified to eat the carrion of all other species? There are only a few more species I thoroughly abhor more than the Pak'ma'ra, and those count the Shadows and the Vorlons, especially their derivative species."

Xavier frowned "Okay… I remember the last species who thought themselves superior to all others and who had no problem eating other species, the Yahg. We exterminated them, because they were too arrogant and stubborn to change, and too dangerous to allow to continue to exist."

"The Pak'ma'ra are not dangerous in that respect YET. However, their religious inflexibility with respect to eating carrion means that if they start running low on carrion, then they will certainly have no problem killing other sentients to eat them. They are extremely dangerous for the reason of their liking to eat sentient corpses more than other types, to make themselves feel superior to other sentients. To them, you or I are no more than not-yet-dead food, and that is why when the Yonji Sinhindrea come, we should stand by and watch them destroy the Pak'ma'ra, with us doing the rest of the universe a favour and wiping out the survivors to prevent a war where they try to make us submit to be their version of livestock. Yes, Fran, I am aware of what some lunatics did with therapeutic cloning when it was first invented, but at the very least, it was your own species and not all others that you decided were fit to be consumed. The Yonji Sinhindrea, a predator race which believes it must destroy all other life and therefore does not make any sense whatsoever, because they need prey to survive, are the same attitude taken to the extreme. When it comes time to clash with them and exterminate them, you will understand the dangers of allowing such an arrogant strain to exist, you will understand why the Pak'ma'ra must be forcibly changed, or exterminated outright."

"We'll see, Commander T'Soni." Xavier said icily as their shuttle docked. Hannah wrapped her arms around him and looked into his eyes for a bit, pushing a plea to come back alive, no matter what, at his mind. He nodded and smiled at her, then leaned down a bit and kissed her forehead before she let go and stepped back. The two outbound people exited into the ship's forward portside hangar bay before watching the Gemini leave. He changed the topic "So where's the rest of the crew? I'm quite sure the Seraphim Republic and the UN of Drell would want to have some people onboard for this mission?"

"The Seraphim Republic representative doubles as our main chef, and our onboard Drell is the chief doctor. We also have a sociologist, Helena, who originally came from a xenophobic society similar to what we'll be encountering. You know about the so-called Twelve Colonies, right?" He nodded "From the Cylon Collective we have Caprica, who can tap in as a shipboard AI when we need one, she might look familiar to you, but only because she was constructed on the same base design as EDI's form. She's going to be an asset when it comes to dealing with the relatively primitive computers the locals still use, or at least, sifting through all the information Kasumi's going to pick up. Caprica also works in the science labs, most often crunching numbers and analyzing society alongside Helena. We expected the local humans might want to negotiate with someone who understands some of what they have to go through, like getting old and stuff, even though she's gotten over it now, so that's one of Helena's secondary duties."

"Sounds like a fun trip." Xavier stated dryly. "Do we have any FTL-capable spy drones yet?"

"Yep, we can send out Light Patrol Boats carrying Creep Spy Drones for the longer distances, or just Creeps for shorter ones, the boats take mere seconds to assemble after we get our first Ship Gantry running."

"Good, well, what are we waiting for? Although, I think we should send off spies before we start getting started with base-building."

Commander T'Soni shrugged "Either way, or both, works, in my opinion, since things over there happen slowly anyways." She noted the announcement on her screen that they ahd permission to proceed when ready, and turned on the PA "Everyone buckled up?"

There was a series of affirmatives from the crew, many in voices Xavier had not been introduced to before, and Commander T'Soni piloted the ship forward into the gateway.

* * *

_Deep Space, March 11, 3872. Local date unknown._

"Best option is to scramble a large number of UEF Rover-class Engineering Drones…" Xavier groused as he looked at the sheer length of the build time for the Ship Gantry for the Battle Cruiser's own onboard engineering suites, a ridiculously long time, over five weeks… "Scrambling a large cloud of Rovers would allow us…"

"What do you think the manufacturing capacity in the hangar bays have been doing ever since we arrived?"

Xavier smiled at the partner he'd been assigned "Right, natural that you should be a step ahead of me… much more experience than me after all. By the way, we're picking up a lot of transmissions, tachyon-based and radio, the science crew" in other words, most of the crew of the ship "are on it, decoding and analyzing the data."

"This might take a while, Templar, even with the swarm of engineering drones we're cranking out."

* * *

It did indeed take quite a while, a whole five days in fact (spamming "Rover" drones worked as far as the resource generation of the BC allowed) until the first Ship Gantry became operational and they started building another ship Gantry while the first cranked out some Light Patrol Boats to shuttle "Creep" Spy Probes into the general vicinity of more distant star systems. The "Creep" had been developed from the Spook (and the name reflected it) Aerospace Spy Plane. It was larger, heavier, carried an onboard Mass Effect-based FTL drive (which was still significantly smaller and was less power-hungry than other FTL drive types) and had self-sustaining power generation, plus longer-range quantum communicators that could relay signals up to about 100 light-years without difficulty.

It was worse than useless in ACU warfare since Mass Effect FTL signatures were so hideously obvious even at the sort of distance from the habitable zone to the edge of a star system. The ME core signatures were also detectable at longer distances than quantum reactors even with the current best in stealth for them. However, in interstellar reconnaissance against an enemy who didn't have quantum-based communications and therefore probably didn't have comparable technology, it was quick, stealthy, nimble and small, reducing the chance of being rammed by a ship exiting FTL that was unaware of its existence. This made it expedient to use.

The crew had, through intel gathered from the local Internet and other sources (Creeps sent to nearby star systems under their own FTL power, using matter reclamation to deal with core charge separation build-up), mostly concluded that, to quote a disgusted Helena Cain "These people are almost worse than the Colonials used to be, at least back then we had religion and ultraconservatives hindering us, these people don't even have that." It was true, the local races seemed to be highly distrustful of one another, but it was Earth that was particularly annoying with all the anti-alien propaganda it was spewing. Yes, they'd had a "horrible" war with the Minbari way back, but what the hell were they thinking firing when the Minbari scanned them and damaged their electronics? "It should have been obvious that had the Minbari had the intent to start a war they would have gone for a full alpha strike and, I don't know, _charged up their main guns instead of just sitting there with the guns sticking out_?" Helena continued exasperatedly "And look at this, a Psi-Corps specifically isolated from the general population, with all the trappings you'd expect of secret police." She shoved the report in question under her superior's nose.

Xavier Fran's eyes widened in anger as he grabbed the data-pad. "What? This is like the Terran Confederacy and Dominion from the Koprulu Sector, with their Ghost program of psychics to terrify the civilians and even military into submission… I'm guessing this organization is completely out of control and is trying to destroy the government so it can take over?"

"Not yet, but our hacking has uncovered data that pertains to their plans, and it seems they are planning to do so." The blonde bio-synthetic woman sitting next to Helena at the conference table said, leaning back and crossing her arms under her breasts, shaking her head sadly. "And it's pretty obvious to everyone that President Santiago was assassinated so that Clark could take over and think he was using Psi-Corps to enforce his orders while in fact being himself used. It's pathetic that Clark blinds himself to something so mind-numbingly obvious, the fact that he is expendable."

"Hm, the human population here is pretty small, I mean, only twenty billion people? Granted, they did have a pretty tough Minbari War, but still…" Xavier shook his head suddenly "Never mind, not everyone's used to the sheer scale of a twelve-hundred year war fought over twenty percent of the galaxy with death counts in the Megadeaths per day or, during major campaigns, Gigadeaths per week. The fact that we still have more than five trillion humans alive today in the Coalition is remarkable given we lost four trillion in the Infinite War… an average of nine Megadeaths per day."

There was a moment of awkward silence in the room before Miranda started talking "While the socio-political analysis of Helena and Caprica is accurate, we've also taken note of how these locals travel." She drew up a hologram of a "Hyperspace Jumpgate" as the title hovering above it proclaimed. "That's the local designation for these things, which are large Slipspace devices. It appears that the Slipspace drives used here are most inefficient, or, more likely, that Slipspace in this area is simply rather unstable and shifts all the time. We have found evidence that the latter is the case by monitoring local Slipspace conditions. It is similar to monitoring quantum travel conditions during a Class 3 Quantum Storm."

The classifications of Quantum Storms were from one to five, and they typically came and went on a seven to eight year cycle, but had been growing steadily weaker as the background of the universe calmed down from the energy discharge of Black Sun and, long before that, the Halos, over time. There hadn't been any Class 5's since immediately after Black Sun's firing, and the last Class 4 had been what had prevented Ariel Williams from calling for aid on Shanxi right away. However, Class 3 was still enough to shut down interstellar civilian gating for safety reasons, and to make most fleets jump outside them and proceed on Slipspace, warp, or Mass Effect drive depending on the distance remaining and conditions in Slipspace or subspace.

Xavier frowned "That is not good for the locals then, do they use any other means of FTL travel?"

Commander T'Soni shook her head brusquely "No, the Vorlons prevented it, fucking control freaks, the only Vorlon I can guarantee I will not cave in the face of is Kosh Naranek, current Vorlon ambassador to Babylon 5. He got the job because he was considered a bit of a radical, so better to sic him on the younger races than to let him hang around on the homeworld lest his influence spread even more. He is however very well respected among the Vorlons." _Not unlike Matriarch Aethyta being voted off the island…_ She thought.

Miranda nodded "She sounds about right in the control freak bit, the Vorlons are revered among most of the races in this sector of the galaxy, and people see them as divine beings of light, so they're probably control freaks… genetic instinct manipulation of younger local races seems probable. Sir, are we planning on isolating our operations to this quadrant? The races here might be insular for good reason, and there may be good reasons the Vorlons limited the size of the Jumpgate system, there are probably other races out there that we may not want to contact for now."

The Grand Crusader nodded back "Yes, you're right, we should keep our operations in this general sector at least for now, until the wars back home resolve themselves."

"We're picking up new broadcasts, Grand Crusader." Kelly Chambers reported via the hologram table in the center of the conference room, from where she was on-duty on the bridge along with Thel Lodam and Jacob Taylor. Kasumi, Mirala, and Commander T'Soni usually made up the third shift each day, but at the moment they were all in the conference room, even the chef and CMO had shown up. "These are alarming regarding the current political situation on Earth and the colonies, it's about the Shadow ship we detected them working on in that Ganymede base." Commander T'Soni had given the name "Shadow", and although she hadn't told them specifically to look there, the Andromeda Sol System—a very close replica of the Milky Way Sol system thanks to Forerunner technology acting over tens of thousands of years—had become the most Creep-saturated zone of space in this sector practically as soon as they located it.

Xavier sighed and ran a hand over his short hair "Put it on, Kelly. Did they do what we thought they were going to do?" They had hypothesized that the EA might try to activate the Shadow ship sometime, and expected it to massively backfire on them.

"Yes, the person they installed as the CPU to the Shadow ship fucked up and the ship went berserk, destroying the facility that housed it. A ship of unknown faction led it into Jupiter's atmosphere and made it damage itself enough by detonating some of the local hydrogen to sink far enough into the atmosphere to be crushed."

Xavier raised an eyebrow at how it was almost reminiscent of one of the battles he'd read of that involved Hannah luring a Covenant fleet into a brown dwarf before igniting it. "Impressive. Although the living CPU thing is a bit disturbing and says the Shadows are probably pretty bad at computer design… or wanted to be hacking-resistant. What did the EA report?"

"The Earth Alliance reports say the alien ship that destroyed the secret facility was destroyed after being pursued to Jupiter by an Earth Alliance warship."

"Let me guess, the EA warship had to do a tactical jump to somewhere near this version of Jupiter to keep up?"

"Yes, and President Clark has declared martial law, curtailing the inquiry to the death of President Santiago and giving himself more room to get moving on his reign of terror."

"As soon as the crap hits the fan, we're going to move out to wherever the Resistance will be rallying. The gantries are coming with us. I'm going to brief Coalition HQ that we'll be moving the Gateway Complex. If the Mu Relay could still work after being knocked out of position, that means Reaper-built Mass Relays will maintain locking to one another even if they're moved, and this little shift is so small compared to the distance travelled that it shouldn't be a problem."

It turned out that there was a problem, the Coalition's leaders told him to reclaim the Gateway instead when they left the LZ, just to be safe and prevent it from falling into the locals' hands, essentially cutting them off from all direct support for at least a couple of months. They said that the _Ascendant Justice_ would arrive in the area they initially landed in, then await instructions, which Xavier could (and, if his plans carried through, would) relay via Light Patrol Boat.

* * *

It was another week later that the group agreed that it was time to move. They now had ten operational Ship Gantries, with 8 originating by the first one multiplying. Another one had been completed on Day 5 of the wait by the BC as it leeched some resources from the other Gantries and it had just finished assembling the 10th Gantry to come online. Yes, they could have launched it half-baked and had it build itself once the main drives, resource generators and engineering suites were in place, but it had been deemed unnecessary to do that.

In the past week, open revolts had begun across many Earth Alliance worlds and fleets, although the rebels weren't doing very well. For example: "…Reporting. The President has declared martial law and has activated the military to quell the Mars colony revolt by any means necessary. We have exclusive video showing…"

Helena's report on the subject was that "They've bombed the domed cities on Mars, twice, in shows of power. Why can't we just storm in and erase the current government and the Psi-Corps from existence? It would save everyone in this sector a lot of grief, and save a lot of lives too."

"Because it would attract the attentions of the older races before we are ready for them, in a way that would suggest that we are a large enough threat for them to come out of hiding just to try to destroy us." Xavier answered smoothly.

"Don't you have adequate stealth systems to remain hidden from the locals though?" Caprica questioned.

"We aren't certain about Vorlon and Shadow capabilities yet, and Commander T'Soni has only told us to be careful about the sensors of those two races." He stated. "Also, the younger races need to learn from their mistakes, it's not like this is something we can't step in and salvage if we feel it necessary."

The problem with holding back too much was that, as Miranda presented "The Orion and Proxima Three Colonies have broken away from the dictatorship and the EA is ready to bring them back in by any means necessary. ISN, their news network, has been blown up while trying to report the truth, and their President has declared martial law. I don't think we should spread our currently meagre forces thin, but the place they seem to be saving for last is the Babylon 5 station, I trust you've read the reports?"

Xavier smirked "The local humans call its system Epsilon Eridani, it's different from ours, but the star is the same general type, a bit redder and dimmer than Sol. It's like this galaxy's counterpart to the Citadel, but much smaller, comparatively downright primitive, and not a seat of government, more like a crossroads than anything else, a typical place to have a war come to its flashpoint. If the Humans hit it… all the other species will come down on them."

"I think we should try to do a reasonably peaceful First Contact first, to give us a decent _casus belli_ when explaining to Coalition HQ why we will fight at Babylon 5 when they try to take the planet." Commander T'Soni's input was a total surprise to everyone present, although reactions of astonishment ground to a halt at the vicious grin she wore. "I will need to borrow a Ship Gantry for this task. Xavier, come with me."

* * *

_High Orbit over Proxima III, roughly 1000 metres from the nearest Earth Alliance warship's hull/weapons. Local year 2260, Coalition date March 25, 3872_

"I knew their sensors were bad, but I never expected them to be THIS bad." Xavier grumbled as he paced on the bridge, 1000 metres from the nearest EA ship's hull (given the location of the bridge in the Ship Gantry's packed-up hull, this was absurdly close). If they extended the 400-metre-long Mavor Antimatter Artillery barrels, they could literally touch some of the antennae of the Earth Alliance ship, and they'd already dropped active stealth and active camouflage. "Let's move away a bit." Commander T'Soni, sitting at the helm and grinning again, edited the safe navigation boundaries up from her current overridden minimum by first cancelling the override. The packed-up Ship Gantry quickly moved away from the other vessel. Once they were at a distance of a few kilometres—still spitting distance but hey… they dropped passive stealth and waited for another couple minutes while the Earth Alliance Warships kept chatting with their ground-side units as if they didn't notice them.

"Oh for fuck's sake… move a bit further, to a safe distance, and drop passive camouflage" She piloted the ship to a point one light-second away from the EA ships before dropping passive camouflage and waiting some more. Xavier Fran rolled his eyes as five minutes passed with nothing happening. "Hold on, turn off the adaptive plating." Said technology was Coalition-wide, but when turned off would usually turn out to have bases in faction colours, hence unit displays for ACU pilots were, well, in faction colours i.e. black for most of a Cybran unit's hull or white and black for Aeon. "Oh boy… drop the shields too. If this doesn't work…" It didn't "Move to the edge of the system and try amplifying our signatures at them so that they see us." Interestingly, if these had been anything but the new Omega-class Destroyers, they would not have been detected without active transmission of Tachyons at the EA ships, the hull plating material itself absorbed or deflected too many types of radiation to large extents for the amplified signature to be clearly detected…

Four of the largest of the Earth Alliance ships lumbered toward them at absurdly low accelerations (about four gravities) soon after they amplified their signature, opening jump-points and exiting at about a tenth of a light-second away from them. "This is the Earth Alliance Ship _Rochester_" The bar above it indicated it was charging its weapons and was at full structural integrity as far as the Coalition 3872 Ship Gantry could assess with its scanners (despite the lack of structural integrity [enforcement] fields or shields). "You have entered a restricted area under the authority of the Earth Alliance Government. " The voice sounded like he was trying to gauge if they spoke English or not "Your ship has no apparent identification and your hull configuration is unknown. Identify yourself."

Xavier toggled to Audio only "Greetings, this is Constructor Eight of the Coalition Andromeda Command" Being confusing on purpose was interesting, to say the least. "Yes, I spoke English, but we are not from Earth." Technically this was true even discounting the two similar Earths, since Milky Way Earth was in UEF territory, not Aeon. "We are just passing through."

There was a moment of silence before a suspicion-filled voice replied "Are you from some sort of lost colony?"

"Not quite, but that doesn't matter too much in this case." That could be interpreted as provocative, but Xavier was practically looking for an excuse to justify fighting at Babylon 5 after the rest of the Gantries finished reclaiming the Gateway (spinning off the mass into fleets of aerospace small-craft that docked to their eternal clamps, after turning off their own mass generation) and were moved there.

There was a bit more silence before the tachyon-based communications continued with "Even though your ship cannot be identified by our records, the language you speak indicates your ship has Human origins and is therefore subject to Earth Alliance Governmental regulations. Due to your sudden appearance on our sensors, we suspect you are a smuggler ship that is carrying illegal contraband whose stealth systems have failed. Due to this and your violation of a military zone, we must board and impound your ship and inspect your cargo, as per Earth Force regulations. Any resistance from you will be considered a sign that you are hostile and we will respond appropriately." Several small, single-man fighters launched from the larger ships. Clearly, these were at least equipped with some inertial compensation technology, due to their manoeuvres at something approaching fifty gravities, since the rotating sections of the larger vessels indicated they did not have any artificial gravity.

"Nice to see their fighter tech isn't as backward as their capital ship technology, couldn't they have at least had two rotating sections side by side to cut down on the non-intuition level of the thrusters?" Xavier commented before looking at the green-haired woman "Now, Commander, have we baited them enough?"

Commander T'Soni said nothing, merely smiled up at him and nodded, so he sent the message of "Nice talking to you, _Rochester_, but I'm afraid we don't have time to stay for confrontations at the moment, good bye." She began them accelerating toward the Babylon 5 direction, leaving the Earthforce vessels behind at an unimpressive (by Coalition standards when in space) acceleration of somewhat over 2,000 gravities i.e. 20 kilometres per second squared. The Earth Alliance vessels seemed to be stunned into silence as they watched their target pull off accelerations only previously even rumoured of on Minbari warships (highest record there was a bit over 1000 Earth gravities, and they can't shoot when putting out that much propulsion power). She toggled all their stealth systems on again, though the shields would take a bit of time to fully recharge even with the option of not being brought back up until at full charge, as opposed to the combat-standard of putting them back up once recharged to half-power. The ship then made a quantum jump to their staging area which was now sitting on the fringe of the Epsilon Eridani system, planning to move in together at sub-light speeds just in case their FTL exit signatures were large enough to be detected by the locals.

As the two senior officers took a Gemini to their flagship, the Grand Crusader sent a call to Caprica, who was responsible for monitoring local sector communications "Have those two destroyers conferred with their high command yet?" Unbeknownst to the EarthForce ships, stealthed Light Patrol Boats had been attached to their hulls practically the moment they'd exited Slipspace. Inertial manipulation had made sure the EA ships didn't notice a thing.

"Yes, sir, they've decided valuable technology like ours can't, and I quote, 'be allowed to fall into alien hands', so they, and several other fleet elements, have been ordered to rendezvous with the EA fleet headed for _Babylon Five_." The Old-Six Platform, as many of the newer, more… _alive_ (though according to Helena she was already far more than just alive) Cylons termed her lot—despite upgrades to match the new ones, who were basically Cybrans who began from AI forms, in capacity—reported with similar disgust to Helena's opinion of this Earth Alliance.

"Well then it's time to get over there and give the Imperialists a good ass-kicking… even the Earth Empire was not as confrontational and xenophobic as this, even after the Seraphim Conflict…" That was the term for that war at the beginning of the Aeon Illuminate's history, the later war, near the end of which he had been put out of commission, was simply the "Seraphim War". The Earth Empire had gone for a simple quarantine after that war instead of going psycho and totally xenophobic, until the Aeon started sounding like fanatics, then they started getting alarmed and overreacting, to which the Aeon reacted with hostility. And so, the Infinite War got into full swing with all three factions arriving on the scene.

* * *

_Epsilon Eridani System, Local year 2260, Coalition date March 25, 3872_

"And there's Delenn's yacht going for help, with Minbari acceleration and top speeds, they'll be a lot faster in the shallow layer of Slipspace used here than the Earth Alliance ships." Commander T'Soni stated boredly as the Coalition vessels hung around, the Ship Gantries having unpacked and begun assembling a new batch of Gantries in near-self-replicating fashion. "Let's see if this way of slowing her down works well enough for us to make our entrance on our terms."

Ambassador Delenn really should have known better than to order her yacht to slow down and inspect the sudden signature of what seemed to be a probe showing up less than fifty metres off her ship's belly side. Her pilots had been responsible for pulling an emergency turn in case it was some sort of stealth mine and firing her yacht's weapons at it, but she had decided to investigate it… It danced around the neutron-based shells she threw at it with nigh-ridiculous speed, hell it evaded her gun barrels' directions before she even fired… and she wondered if her systems were acting up on her. But a glance outside the cockpit window from where she was now standing by the frustrated pilot said otherwise as the object, now clearly visible as something looking like two flying wings held together by a lot of struts with several central hulls among those struts. It wasn't exactly small either… _a good bit wider than an Earth Force Starfury fighter, but not nearly as tall…_ she thought.

After a few minutes of cat-and-mouse, which consisted of the Minbari yacht doing wild manoeuvres trying to get the probe into its scopes, the probe faded sharply, then disappeared altogether from the sensors. In other words, they turned on passive stealth, adaptive plating and passive camouflage, realized that at under one hundred metres range the Minbari craft could in fact pick them with only passive stealth, then switched on active stealth. Delenn rubbed her eyes a couple times as they looked around to see nothing, then ordered her crew to run a diagnostic on all the sensors in case they had been tricked by some sort of hologram. 99% transparency was hard to see at best when the adaptive plating had the object blended in with the background colours as much as possible, so it wouldn't be fair to blame her…

Anyhow, with respect to the diagnostic, it just wouldn't do to get lost in hyperspace because of faulty sensors, Sheridan was depending on her… as she was sharply reminded when he called, sounding anxious "Delenn, is everything alright?"

"Everything's fine, John, we just detected an odd sensor blip near us, it's gone now, I'm having them run a diagnostic on the sensors just in case."

"Sensor trouble? Well, I would offer you another ship, but we don't have anything with better sensors, or speed…"

"Please don't worry, John, help will come soon."

And then she had to wait for a freighter to exit and clear the Jumpgate entering B5 space. After that, she had to take a detour aboard the _Valen'tha_, seat of the Grey Council, because the main elevators relaying things from the shuttle deck to command deck (two in relay form, separated by some distance, to reduce chances of boarding actions getting through) were down for maintenance. After that, she waited roughly two minutes for the main elevator to the Grey Council's chambers before yanking on her recently acquired hair and wanting to scream when someone deigned to finally inform her that that elevator was also down for scheduled maintenance to be performed in a couple hours' time. Commander T'Soni had teleported aboard the _Valen'tha_ a week ago and changed the elevator maintenance schedule up a bit, delaying the comprehensive maintenance of the primary elevators by one day…

All in all, Delenn took a good twenty more minutes than she otherwise would have. This was more than enough time for the "Coalition Andromeda Command" to get the job done that they needed to get done, despite it being proportionally a small delay compared to travel time between Minbar and Babylon 5.

* * *

A/N: 3872 Escort Carrier, 3872 Battle Cruiser and 3872 Ship Gantry data can be found on my DeviantArt profile (also Guardian54) as a bunch of Excel screenshots pieced together, titled "Coalition Warships List (Up to 3872)".

Replies to those who cared to review.

**Spacebar**: The _Ascendant Justice_ would also possibly be useful against Yonji Sinhindrea dreadnoughts, but that's late enough in the story that mass numbers of conventional ships would be available to slice them to bits. I think Commander T'Soni's best advantage would be _durability_… Mass Deposits = Shall be explained to B5 personnel when they question it. If Coalition units had more mass than 1 mass = 3 tons in them, well, their propulsion systems are even more spectacular than I let on, as it's already quite hideously huge… although you do explain how wall sections work rather well, though I partly used the same idea (reclaim some of the ground) for explaining their low cost (coupled with the fact that they're about the density of Styrofoam).

**Nenfaer**: See the chapter.

**Bad News:** Took the Mary Sue Litmus Test I found on Google, John in this spawn is borderline from "just fine" to "could go either way" (for fanfic characters, for original fiction, he'd still be "just fine"), James is in the high end of "either way" mostly as he's a twin and the love interest of a canon character. Commander T'Soni is in the "needs some adjusting" range mostly as she's a species you'd never expect in a decent sci-fi fic (some people have figured it out though, good for them, it was rather obvious, I think…). **Harmony Shepard from my "Universe 2" stories was in the low end of the "Sue" range** (for fanfic characters, 34 points on that particular test, mostly due to being a twin, having the same friends, being a hard-ass/analytical, and having a spark with a canon character). However, get this, assuming Harry's actions often working out for the best indicates JKR believes him justified, **Harry Potter himself rates 86 ± 5 points on that test! Over 50 means HOPELESS SUE even for original fiction writers!** I must register my astonishment that JKR managed to start a cultural phenomenon with a hopelessly Mary Sue character, _even if you don't count the "do you think he was always justified" questions on the test_!

REVIEW!


	5. Defence Wins Championships

A/N: Am contemplating theme songs for characters, by this point in her career, Commander T'Soni's theme could very well be _Indestructible_ by Disturbed.

**Spacebar**: Er, terminal velocity fall in Earth atmosphere, we will cover that in a later chap, but usually it's not _quite_ "get up, walk away", depending on impacted surface. We are aware that the first Kosh let himself get killed, please read AlbertG's **A Universe Of Change**, it's a major reference point for this fic (am crap with inventing ship names…), except the Coalition doesn't display the stupidity Starfleet does (Star Trek replicator tech has serious problems if they can't mass-produce warships with it). I think it's the biggest thing they got from those 1200 years and a bit over **4,000,000,000,000** (sorry, stupid mistake before, I left out 3 zeroes) lives, an understanding of the power of REAL mass production (not a pun).

**Also, no, there are no basketball games here, in case the chapter title gives you any ideas.**

* * *

Chapter 5: Defence Wins Championships

_Epsilon Eridani System, Local year 2260, Coalition date March 25, 3872_

"Looking at all you've done, we have to wonder why the Coalition has not tried to take over the universe yet." Helena said to Xavier over dinner in the mess, gesturing to Caprica and herself to explain the first-person plural.

"We hope that we are mature enough to do something so unimaginably stupid, and so unimaginative." He answered after a brief pause for thought. "It's better to have all sorts of different technological threads, every one tech tree has weaknesses, but together, we life forms of the universe are strong and will overcome anything, even if that anything is the end of our universe. I know that sounds funny, but we can take inspiration from everyone else in many ways, Helena. Besides, we don't want to get into another Infinite War, having outsiders keeps us working together in harmony and in friendly competition. We know it's possible for us to overrun things, but there is so much beauty in reality that it would be downright criminal of us, any of us, to try something like that. Besides, it is an immature way of thinking, trying to dominate everything else. It's something only for foolish, arrogant races, be they young or old, to try."

"Tell that to the Vorlons." Commander T'Soni said from where she was eating. "I'm sure they'll appreciate it. Actually…" She grinned wickedly "I think I might do just that to Kosh if I feel the need to be rude."

* * *

_Epsilon Eridani System, Local year 2260, Coalition date March 27, 3872_

"What data do we have on their weapons?" Miranda had asked the two senior officers out of curiosity two days ago when they first arrived in this area to see the Babylon station already on alert, with a couple large warships nearby, including two of the "Omega-class destroyers", all equipped with an IFF signal that the "Coalition Andromeda Command" warships had immediately recorded, then took some time to hash out before preparing it for transmission.

The answer was that the enemy had Plasma Resonance Cannons, Shaped Plasma Resonance Cannons ("Pulse Cannon" to the locals), Lasers and Particle Cannons (Particle Lasers to the locals), and of course nuclear-armed missiles and mines. The locals also had an interesting technology called an "Interceptor Grid", which fired plasma with its own stable magnetic field, but which was designed to pop other stable magnetic fields on impact. That meant several things by implication, even if they hadn't recorded enough scan data on the other weapons systems to realize these things.

The most important thing it said was that the locals hadn't developed resonance-variable, sensor-equipped plasma weaponry yet, or adaptive self-stabilizing harmonics. Those technologies, developed independently by the UEF and Aeon, had nullified the effectiveness of interceptor weapons that had been deployed on defensive platforms a bit over a millennium ago, before even Commander T'Soni's time. They had later copied each other and implemented both types of anti-interception systems on their plasma weapons. That had been bad, bad news for the Cybran Nation at the time.

Regardless, that was enough of a history lesson, back to the present…

The Ship Gantries, all twenty that existed now, were standing by and packed up, ready for battle, although their exposed armament was somewhat less than the total defensive armament they were equipped with, particularly with respect to short-ranged weapons that were on the inside of the Gantry arms when they were deployed outward, and were now buried in the seemingly-sealed "hull" of the packed-up Gantry. The arms basically bolted/strapped together when packed up, with the outer arm sections telescoping to shrink the targeting profile of the resulting ship. Unfortunately this meant that sections with weapons on each arm were separated by smaller-diameter sections without when the objects were unpacked, but the things were never designed to fight without support in shipyard defence or without packing up first in the case of active combat, which was rarely recommended as equivalent warships would be much faster (and cheaper in mass/energy, but that didn't matter) to construct and replace, plus far more nimble. However, the Ship Gantries were designed with survival first in the minds of the engineers, so their shielding was more than an order of magnitude higher than any other Coalition warship save the Escort Carriers and Battle Cruisers which were a bit less than an order of magnitude less.

"If those Earth Alliance warships in Slipspace want to make a dramatic entry, they'd better approach the Jumpgate right about… now, before our Asylums can get into position and anchor to the B5 fleet's hulls." Commander T'Soni deadpanned. There was silence for about two minutes before she sighed "Well, it seems the Multiverse is less prone to being dramatic than I expected."

Another minute later, Kelly reported from her and Thel Lodam's station at Fleet Coordination and Tactical. "Detecting Slipspace contacts moving toward the Jumpgate, six large contacts, identifying three _Omega_-class Destroyers and three _Hyperion_-class Cruisers. It appears they want to exit Slipspace battle-ready instead of using their limited reactor power on opening a jump point."

"Our Asylums won't do much good against those weapons yields we'd predicted, Grand Crusader, are you sure you wish to deploy them in this way?" Thel Lodam questioned as his eyes tracked the dots approaching the Jumpgate

"It might only take one shot to pop an Asylum's shield from almost any of their heavier weapons, but their laser capacitors are small enough from our scans that it will neutralize an inbound laser burst and still stay up, which means they can still collapse the containment of a plasma hit that the interceptor grids of the B5 forces miss. That should increase the survivability of the B5 ships by a vast margin." Xavier stated as he turned back to organizing the fleet positions of the twenty warships and their 34800 attached starfighters he had at his disposal.

Each 3872 Ship Gantry had 5400 external anchorage "clamps" over its surface, compensating for the lack of internal hangar spaces. A T3 craft took up 3 such clamps (so up to 1800 T3 craft per Gantry), and he had 20 gantries active and close to fully packed. The _Surveyor_ as they'd taken to calling his Battle Cruiser could carry 600 T3 craft internally (T3s took 4 hangar space each) plus 350 externally. Having lots of time to prepare and manufacture them meant he had 35000 assorted small-craft ready for battle, even though he left 2050 T3 equivalents (denoted as "T3e") i.e. 6150 storage spaces, all external, empty across the fleet. He honestly didn't expect to need any more auxiliaries, and his own ship wouldn't even disgorge its (wholly) internal complement unless pursuing the enemy and engaging after a jump. They only planned to use five of the Ship Gantries, with 8675 small-craft attached (leaving roughly 85 T3e's i.e. about 250 clamps empty per Gantry). The absolutely huge maximum starfighter complements were another reason why gantries fighting in shipyard defence didn't need to worry much about weaponry blind spots, which only existed for the heavier anti-ship weapons. For Air Transports, the clamps worked differently (they took up more clamps than typical even when attached in factory-compacted configuration, the one they were built in), but that wasn't relevant right now.

Xavier continued with "The first defender ship to take real damage will be our cue to announce that Babylon 5 is under our protection and confront the Earth Alliance vessels. If they don't back down then we'll just have a capital ship duel, no need to reveal our fighter tech yet… I've already set up makeshift brigs in the five Gantries we're putting into our first wave, and I'll be relaying my transmissions through Gantry One" Gantry numbers One through Five were going to be put into this battle space to start, and although coordinating fire would be harder than with actual crews on them, the combat AIs should do well enough with Thel's guidance if needed "Only Gantry One will engage to begin things. I want the quantum teleporters to lock onto and move those starfighter pilots into the individual cells in the brigs as soon as they begin attacking, and to separate ALL their clothes from them in the process. Just get rid of all the cellulose, nylon and so on, that should be about right for this sector's clothing at this point in time."

"Yes sir… what?" Miranda blinked suddenly "Never mind, I get it."

Xavier explained anyways or the benefit of the others present "Just in case they have gas filters in their inner uniforms…"

* * *

_Aboard the_ Churchill_, Epsilon Eridani System, Local year 2260, Coalition date March 27, 3872_

"What. The. Fuck." Captain Sandra Hiroshi questioned as her ship continued the best evasive manoeuvres it could manage, under heavy mid-range (1000-4000 kilometres) fire from an Omega and all three Hyperions. "Are you sure that plasma shot did not connect after it got past our interceptors?"

"No, ma'am, it exploded two hundred fifty metres away from the hull, and the blast was deflected by something else, our armour isn't even scratched, let alone scorched like we expect it to be." Well, setting off a megaton-level plasma bolt that close tended to at least rock the ship and scorch/heat the plating, but that hadn't happened.

* * *

_Aboard the_ Surveyor_, Epsilon Eridani System, Local year 2260, Coalition date March 27, 3872_

"Hot damn that took out five of our Asylums' overlapping shields at once!" Kelly exclaimed.

"Well, it's like most of the artillery weapons we have, which are vastly under-cited in weapons yields, they just cite the average energy put out per target's worth of area in the splash damage zone. It's why the Mavor can take out most factories in one or two shots instead of more, and often crack overlapping shields that are all exposed to the blast directly, because the total yield put on the target is a lot greater than what a single smaller target would have taken, and whole-surface overcharging only does so much to nullify the effects." Miranda explained to the younger woman. "So it's not surprising that that splash damage continued outward to take out several more of the shield bubbles we've got anchored over the surface of the defender ships, even though it didn't continue toward the target because of the shield generator's standard pulse outward, emitted when the bubble buckles."

* * *

_Aboard the_ Churchill_, Epsilon Eridani System, Local year 2260, Coalition date March 27, 3872_

_I can imagine what the more religious members of the crew must be thinking right now, feels like divine intervention or something._ Hiroshi thought before barking "Open fleet comms!" Major Ryan immediately showed up on her screen "_Alexander_, your status?" The two of them had been focusing fire as best as possible to take out the Hyperions. So far one was dead in the water and another was heavily damaged and "listing" in that one side's main thrusters weren't working and it was force to use manoeuvring thrusters to not be far off in its manoeuvres.

"They haven't been able to hit us, the plasma bolts and lasers keep on getting stopped short of the hull…" Suddenly there was an alarm on his end, he looked down at his ship status display and facepalmed "Damn it, we've just been hit by a few pulse and particle laser shots in the rotating section, armour's scratched up but nothing's been breached, Captain. Still, this is really damned weird…"

"You can say that again… if you want to jinx us." She took another good look at the displays and frowned "Sheridan, how is the stat—HOW DID THAT POD… Oh… never mind." The wreck of the third Hyperion sitting next to Babylon 5 said enough as to how the Breaching Pod had survived long enough to latch onto the station and attach to the location of a hull breach from the Hyperion's guns at close range, before the ship was destroyed by the defence grid, like Hiroshi had expected to occur BEFORE the Pod could attach.

Sheridan sounded strained as he said "Yeah, I know, you mind bringing the Earth Force ships a bit closer so that our defence grid can actually hit them? We're having a large melee down in Brown Sector because the Narn troops didn't listen to Garibaldi and charged the intruders."

"We'll try. Manoeuvre to bring the enemy closer to the station!" Hiroshi barked the last part to her crew, who got to work. A few minutes later, the ship trembled violently "Damn it!" It seemed the EA ships had taken to firing paired shots and focusing fire on the _Churchill_ alone, and whatever odd shield grid her ship had been granted had only fended off the first bolt. Yes, the second bolt had been destabilized too, but it had detonated at a mere fifty metres from the hull, scorching the plating, slagging the surface layer and punching a crater in the armoured hull's outer surface. She reactivated fleet comms herself "That Hyperion is done for, target the lead Omega! Shoot for the center of the rotating section! Keep up the evasive manoeuvres!" It was the best bet to actually hit the enemy, particularly to break their back, now if only they could power more than four gun barrels—in two main gun turrets—and interceptors, at the same time…

Her ship was hit again, this time directly, by a plasma bolt, and it actually rocked as the blast punched through the armour on one side and set off fires in the area, which were soon suffocated by lack of oxygen. Said area flashed from blue to red on her display of the ship's status immediately and power readings from the reactors in the rear of the ship to the main weapon systems in the head began fluctuating. True, the rotating section gave a decent one Earth gravity on the outermost deck, and rather less on the decks closer to the center, but the turn rate of the section still made crew transfer between that section and the spine and main hull of the ship very annoying, requiring several transfer coaster ring assemblies. One such assembly had ceased functioning due to the damage her rotating section had taken.

* * *

A/N: About the rotating section. If it has a radius of 300 metres (about right, though a bit generous, from schematics I have obtained), then 1 Earth gravity (9.8 metres per second squared) on the outside demands the speed of the outside of the section be the square root of 2940, which is about 54 metres per second. This is a turn rate of 0.18 radians per second. If the central, stationary spine of the ship is 50 metres in radius, then at the spine-rotating section interface, the relative speeds of the two sections would be 9 metres per second. This means some sort of coaster ring assembly, which first synchronizes speed with one side, then the other side, should be present for crew transfers.

* * *

_Epsilon Eridani System, Local year 2260, Coalition date March 27, 3872_

_Whoever designed the Omegas should have put in more reactors, and ideally closer to the head where most of the weapons are situated so that we can do better than a hammer-like alpha strike followed by much-reduced sustained fire._ Hiroshi thought bitterly as weapons power feed levels fluctuated a bit before they could reroute the feed. Her mind turned into a sour tone next as she barked orders for a repositioning relative to the _Alexander_ as the ship took more damage. _Then again that would make even less space for sensors and capacitors than what we currently have, which would simply not work._

The Jumpgate activated again, and Hiroshi winced while Major Ryan cursed loudly. Seven new Omegas (four of which had previously been attached to the Proxima III pacification fleet) and another Hyperion had spilled forth from the hyperspace portal, along with another breaching pod currently attached to the Hyperion's hull. Hiroshi knew at a glance that she and the _Alexander_ had been drawn too far away from the station to get back before the attackers, who had greater momentum, could get there… _aw hell…_

The ten hostile Omegas formed up in two separate formations, five facing the two Babylon 5 affiliated warships and five, plus the Hyperion, lining up to face Babylon 5. The hail from them came as "This is Senior Captain Terrell Drake of the _Evanston_ to _Babylon Five_. Under the authority from President Clark, you are ordered to surrender the station. All senior officers are under arrest. If you continue to resist, we will force your submission."

Aboard the _Evanston_, the comms officer was surprised to receive a hail "Sir? We're receiving a hail." The captain was at the moment conferring with some of the other captains who were telling him the two-kilometre ship they were detecting at the edge of the battle space matched the signature, and hideously clashing hull colour scheme for that matter, of the ship the new arrivals in his fleet had encountered in the Proxima system. "Sir?" He called, louder this time.

"What is it? Are they surrendering?" Drake looked vaguely disappointed, since the enemy had been inflicting losses on Earth Force but had yet to take any real losses themselves, excluding their fighters which had taken some losses.

"We're only getting an audio feed, but it seems to be coming from the capital ship that we're picking up near the perimeter of the battle." Comms put it on speaker anyway.

"This is Grand Crusader Xavier Fran of Coalition Andromeda Command, Babylon Five is under our protection. Stand down and leave or you will be evicted from this area."

Captain Drake frowned and jammed his finger down on the transmit button "Negative, the Earth Alliance has authority here. Do not force us to fire on you." He leaned away from the microphone (nice to talk to someone without giving them a live feed of your whole bridge, after all) and took his finger off the button, thinking. The English was either very well synthesized or it was probably a human-run ship. The terminology, "Crusader" and "Andromeda", was to Drake more indicative of a common history than any language connotations might say. Earth Alliance Intelligence might not have given them completely bullshit data for once, which was astounding in and of itself. Logic would suggest this was one of Sheridan's secret weapons, although Drake couldn't see how the hell he'd built something so huge without them knowing. "Proceed and target that ship, just in case."

"Aye, sir."

"Tactical, give me an analysis of that ship." Drake frowned at the information. Other than the dimensions of the ship, which including the weapons currently seen all over it, was precisely two thousand metres long, one thousand metres wide, and eight hundred metres tall (using the plane of symmetry to determine the directions of width and height), there was basically no information. Well, there was the completely ludicrous colour scheme of a mixed grey, black, white, and deep indigo hull, but that was beside the point. They couldn't detect anything beyond the fact that the ship was there in plain sight. Their scans found absolutely nothing inside the outermost layer of the ship."Almost like a damned hologram." The precise dimensions reinforced his opinion as there was no reason to design a ship specifically to that size. If it wasn't a hologram, if its captain was human, then he was another traitor who needed to be dealt with. He jammed his finger back down on the transmit button "Coalition warship, you will surrender your vessel immediately or we will disable or destroy it." He looked at his comm. officer after taking his finger off the button. "Open a channel to our fleet, set it to on by default." That was standard combat doctrine as once engaged, it was much easier to just make sure the whole fleet could hear you than to need to push a button all the time.

"Channel Open, sir."

"To all ships, the _Evanston_, _Rochester_, _Hector_, _Persephone, Cerberus_ and _Pournelle_ will deal with the Coalition threat. The _Roanoke_, _Agrippa_, _Diana_ and _Nimrod_ will neutralize the Alexander and Churchill, focusing on one at a time." That should overwhelm the defence grids of those two… "The _Lenmark_ will escort the Pod to _Babylon 5_, their resistance should be compromised enough for you to get out of there afterward." He had taken over fleet command from Captain Dexter Smith on arriving since he was higher-ranked (and, a brief time ago, miffed at being ordered to lead from the rear against these ragtag rebels). "All ships will converge on B5 as soon as the initial tasks are complete. Let's get moving, people." He turned to his helmsman "Lieutenant, steer us to that so-called Grand Crusader's ship, I want it out of the way as soon as possible." He expected it to turn tail and run facing five opponents of comparable class, although the ship was very wide, so it was conceivable that it could match against three or four Omegas. But how would the ship vent its waste heat if it had such a low surface area to volume ratio and had enough weapons to compare to multiple Omegas? "If they don't run, lock onto them and fire as soon as you get into range."

"Targeting…"

"Sir, they're moving toward us!" The sensor officer reported.

"So be it." He switched on the fleet channel "Lock onto your assigned targets and fire as soon as you are in range." A group of Starfuries prepared to engage the defenders of B5 and a similarly sized group flew toward the Coalition ship with the supporting destroyers and prepared to disassemble it. If there was anything left, the science labs on Earth would enjoy investigating the pieces. A barrage of heavy laser, particle laser, plasma cannon and pulse cannon fire left the Evanston just before the "Coalition" warship began manoeuvring.

* * *

_Babylon 5 Station, Same Time_

When Captain John Sheridan, leader of Babylon Five, saw the next wave of Earth Alliance warships leaving the Jumpgate, his perplexed look turned into a grimace. Babylon 5's weapons would like time to cool down a bit, both friendly Omegas had been damaged, and the numerical ratio was now hopeless. This was unlike the Minbari War where the battle lines were more than clear enough as "Us versus Them". This EA civil war was "Us versus Us", with a Hitler wannabe lunatic trying to seize power. Everyone they killed was someone they knew. As Major Ryan had said earlier, these were people who wore the same uniforms, ate the same sort of food, laughed at the same jokes and upheld the same constitution, although that was a bit questionable now with these guys following Clark's madness…

A very loud transmission seemed to come from everywhere at once, blaring through the speakers as "This is Grand Crusader Xavier Fran of Coalition Andromeda Command, Babylon Five is under our protection. Stand down and leave or you will be evicted from this area."

Sheridan raised his eyebrows as six (!) of the Omegas veered off to confront the large capital ship that had appeared near the battle earlier and apparently now decided to join in. It wasn't an unreasonable engagement ratio, as the target was much larger in volume than even a _Sharlin _-class War Cruiser. This made the engagement more reasonable now that the _Alexander_ and _Churchill_ had moved closer to B5. "All Starfuries are to assist the _Alexander_ and _Churchill_. B5 batteries, focus fire on the _Lenmark_ and Breaching Pod as much as feasible. Lieutenant Corwin, get more troops down to Brown Sector and repel the boarders." That would be another problem with the second Breaching Pod approaching the station…

His eyebrows nearly disappeared in his hair as the Coalition warship began accelerating at rates only previously heard of on Minbari warships, the plasma and pulse cannon fire missing altogether but the laser and particle laser fire splashing on some sort of shield bubble.

* * *

_CSC Surveyor, Same Time_

"They're more confident of their own abilities than is generally safe." Xavier stated stiffly as Gantry One danced around the enemy fire, no longer amplifying its signature. That had been necessary as it was the only non-optical way they'd have been noticed by the Omegas with the shields up at their initial distance from the fight. Fortunately, the fire control sensors of the Omegas were better than their general search sensors, because otherwise, with shields up they probably wouldn't have been detected, let alone track-able at their current distance i.e. 10,000 kilometres, apparently the engagement range of the EA ships. "Not that they shouldn't be, their plasma weapon yields are quite high, high enough to make a strategic-missile-sized dent in our shields and fields. However, it seems their space warfare is still mostly in the battleship-based form that to an extent the Citadel Races and the Covenant are in and haven't evolved into fighter-centric combat like us and the Koprulu Sector races have. Vector a Continental and two Wailers to grab and halt the progress of the Breaching Pod. Have all the fighter pilots targeting Gantry One been dealt with?"

About the Wailer, they'd finally gotten around to correcting the original typo in the unit name, so now it didn't have an irrational H after the W anymore. The Cybran T3 Heavy Gunship was noted for much higher weapons energy output than the Broadsword for the same DPS against Coalition units, because of its slower firing rate from its Heavy Disintegrator Pulse Laser, making it better for duty against races without structural field technology. It had weaker structural fields and no "personal" shield (which the new Broadsword generation had) but it had AA that was actually vaguely useful, unlike the Broadsword's. Also like the Broadsword, it no longer had a minimum range on the Heavy DPL unlike the original Wailer did when it was introduced in the Seraphim War. It did however have a switch that toggled between either active stealth OR radar jamming. However, neither was particularly necessary against Earth Alliance ships.

"Aye, they've been sedated." Kelly reported.

"Anti-Fighter Weapons fully free against the fighters. Secondary anti-ship weapons have prioritization on power conduits on the enemy capital ships, one at a time, we need to assess their performance in combat." Sure, the computer analysis of the scan results said that cutting the power conduits from the engine block to the front end of the ship would silence most of the onboard weapons, but they had to test it out. "No need to have our other starfighters engage yet, keep up evasive manoeuvres on Gantry One."

"Breaching Pod seized, enemy fighter craft attacking Gantry One silenced, some fighters are approaching the Pod." Thel Lodam stated. Zapper TMDs in space also functioned as anti-aircraft point defence weapons when no missiles of adequate yield were in play to activate their TMD sensors. They might not have the splash damage of flak or the range/power of SAMs/SIMs in this regard, but they were good enough to wreck un-fielded/shielded units in short order.

"Have Gantry Three nab the pilots heading for the Pod, the Pod Retrieval group will silence the fighters after pilot extraction. Target the Pournelle with a full Loa Tactical Missile volley. Caprica, how's the firewalls going on that cruiser?" He immediately continued giving orders such as realigning the Asylums to provide maximum protection from the EA ships.

The blonde, who was half-immersed in the ship computers at the moment, slumped back in her seat in Light Armour, with her helmet on but visor transparent, was replying slowly, but he heard her just fine "We have access, downloading all the information onboard en masse right now, their systems aren't very fast, so I can't do much without them noticing."

"Keep going, be prepared to disable the cruiser after you finish downloading." Xavier ordered.

"The pod's engines are nearly redlining, they're trying to break free. Comm chatter with the _Lenmark_ says they're trying to figure out what's seized them, without success, and are trying to escape it."

"Teleport the pod personnel onboard into Gantry Three's brig. Hack into the pod's systems and shut off the engines." Xavier had originally planned to turn the pod around and let it loose to ram the Hyperion with later, but now decided that wasn't worth the effort. "Commander, can you modify people's memories?"

Commander T'Soni snorted from where she was observing the bridge operations "Of course I can, but all of B5 is witnessing us, you know…"

"Got it." _Damn, that means I can't just transport the people off the cruiser right now…_ Xavier went back to the damage readouts on the enemy ships and weapons "Impressive armour they've got there… hit the _Evanston_ with a Heavy Oblivion Cannon shot! And take out the laser turrets on those ships with some plasma accelerators!"

* * *

_EAS Evanston, Same Time_

Captain Drake was shouting "Bring over the _Roanoke_ and _Agrippa_! Gunnery, keep firing!" when his seat jumped under him. Most of the alpha strike had missed the target, and it seemed to be protected by some sort of energy shield, which had easily absorbed what little energy had actually hit it. The _Hector_ had been hit with two shots of some sort of plasma beam weapon that had torn one side of the bow open, spilling debris and bodies into space. They had lost a main gun turret, but after rerouting power to another turret, they continued firing at their maximum sustained firing rate, powering two pulse cannon turrets, a laser cannon, and interceptors.

The _Pournelle_ had been swarmed with a volley of a full thousand missiles of some sort that split in three when hit by interceptors. Since it had been distributed over most of the ship's surface instead of concentrated, the ship was now blind, deaf, and dumb, its entire outer hull pitted and slagged. According to the scans, the heat hadn't penetrated and, with the insulating layers of ceramic relatively uncompromised, wouldn't penetrate inside. With the thruster exhausts untouched, the ship could still move. The enemy didn't aim for the bridge windows, which were usually covered with armoured doors, so it could still use the Mark One Eyeball to manoeuvre. However, that said something as to how precisely they could target their missiles individually, and so many missiles at once fired against an aggressively manoeuvring ship… it was a show of precision. The ship's weapons turrets had been welded to the hull by the missiles, so it was practically useless with how fast the Coalition ship was manoeuvring.

Their pulse lasers and particle cannons were the only things they had that could score hits on the Coalition ship, which was frustrating as they weren't the main anti-ship weapons. The Starfuries were worse than useless as the ridiculously large and fast anti-fighter missiles of the enemy swarmed them and annihilated them. Point defence lasers from the enemy did not help the starfighters in the least. Maintaining a targeting solution was easy enough, so at least it wasn't like during the Minbari War in that respect, but actually hitting the speedy target was a whole other story. What was worse was that the enemy was using highly surgical strikes with their plasma beam weapon—which interceptors seemed to not affect at all—to cut off primary power conduits, first on the _Hector_ and then on the _Rochester_.

Then something hit his ship and it felt like getting kicked in the ass with how his seat jerked. Several consoles exploded and the bridge lights dimmed as officers injured by the overloading electronics screamed in pain. His status display flickered before a large section of the ship in the chin area turned from tranquil blue to an angry red. Someone was yelling for firefighting equipment as one of the consoles had caught on fire. A large number of alarms were blaring and systems were reaching their limits _This… this must be something like what fighting the Minbari back in the War was like._ Drake thought as he stood, coughed from the acrid fumes, and kept his head down after that.

At the same time, the _Cerberus_ was hit repeatedly by plasma accelerators to the bow to silence its laser cannons, but Kelly seemed to have over-judged the damage resistance of the materials in the EA ships, because the ship was now adrift with primary power offline and fires on several decks where power conduits had fried. Meanwhile, the _Agrippa_ and _Roanoke_ bore down on the battle-space, firing their alpha strikes but only hitting with their lasers due to the thing's abominable nimbleness for its size and its highly efficient interceptor grid.

* * *

_CSC Surveyor, Same Time_

The officially cited yield for a standard Heavy Oblivion Cannon by the end of the Covenant War was "65 kT to-single-target", but the actual yield was _much_ higher (this made perfect mathematical sense as yield channelling wasn't totally efficient, allowing for splash damage to be inflicted), though about 65 kilotons TNT's worth would be directed into the targeted area that was _within the diameter of the plasma blob_ i.e. in an area approximately four metres across, at practically zero range for the leading edge of the plasma blob. In comparison, EA plasma shots detonated typically about ten metres away (leading edge to hull distance) from ship hulls and were much less focused. Even pulse cannon shots had the energy they directed spread over a much larger area, so their directed yield density was actually slightly lower than a HOC "shell", though total yield was significantly higher.

Through a rough calculation, 65 kT is able to vaporize an iron cylinder, sitting in deep space at universal background temperature, of that diameter and something on the order of 600 metres in length. The result of the plasma burst tunnelling through the 10-metre armoured hull of the Omega destroyer was an internal firestorm in the breached sector that extinguished itself shortly thereafter as the air was sucked out of that sector, along with the vapours of everything that had been in that section. The crew in that section weren't even carbonized, they were boiled into gas in an instant after the hull buckled. The internal bulkheads that had stopped the blast glowed with molten metal, hissing and bubbling as it slowly cooled with exposure to space. With a relatively enclosed damage area (only one side out of six blown open to space), radiation-based cooling was slow, but the _Evanston_ had worse things to worry about than that.

However, Gantry One wasn't having an easy time either. The Ravagers might be wholly able to prevent plasma bolts from nearing the thing but lasers were another story altogether "Shields down to eighty-five percent, we really should end this by small-craft, activating passive stealth and camo, and/or use of primary anti-ship weapons. Shields down to eighty-three percent…" The Gantry Kelly was manoeuvring had just been hit with another volley of lasers. The enemy's Alpha strike had taken the shields down a significant amount from laser fire as instead of only firing a few lasers they could fire them all at once, something not quite expected from these ships' low power readings.

This percentage was ominous as Ship Gantries were equipped with an extremely large number of Heavy Shield Generators producing overlapping shield bubbles. These were backed by another layer of shielding that was a bubble around the entire ship from many merged bubbles. Yes, this was now possible due to technical advances, but overall total power was significantly reduced compared to individual, overlapping bubbles. Generally, about half of the generators were incorporated into the big bubble, with half the bubbles standing independently while the rest kept the big bubble running over the whole ship. This allowed greater damage absorption. However, overall shield strength was still measured by a single big measurement, which was more than an order of magnitude larger than any current Coalition warship model save the Escort Carriers and Battle Cruisers had. That had been the main reason Xavier chose a Ship Gantry for the first skirmish, to test enemy weapons effects on the shields.

"They're launching strategic missiles!" Thel barked.

Xavier nodded to himself, it was quite enough data collected already, and he'd just caught the new arrivals prepping missiles from the sensor data displays just before Thel told him. Commander T'Soni gave the orders before he could "Kill the missiles. Negative on the first two request options, but have Gantries Two and Four close in and be prepared to rescue the crews of anything Gantry One is about to target. Weapons free." He stared at her for what she'd said. _We can't let all our tricks be known too quickly…_ He thought at her. She beamed back _I'll explain later._

"I'm done disabling the _Lenmark_," Caprica called. "All their primary power grid parts are offline or fried."

"Good. Kelly, put ONLY the Sonance and Scathis Batteries within firing arc on the _Persephone_, coordinated fire. Caprica, shut down that ship's power." Xavier ordered at the same time as Commander T'Soni gave some more orders.

"Evacuate the ship as quickly as possible before firing." Xavier glanced at her but let it go. The Earth Alliance couldn't remotely come close to blocking quantum transports right now, so maybe letting the tech out of the bag wouldn't be so bad. On the other hand, if they showed every tech advantage they had the younger local races would likely piss themselves in terror.

"Why the inconsistency now, Commander?"

She shrugged "I've figured the Earth Alliance is probably less stupid than we think, they'll piece it together from the accounts of the ones we already saved anyways. Might as well go all the way."

* * *

_EAS Evanston, Same Time_

Drake's eyebrows, one of which had a cut that was oozing blood slowly, creased together again as both Earth Force ships fired all their foremost missile tubes, sending a volley of 300-megaton thermonuclear warheads down the tubes at their target. "Captain Smith! You weren't authorized to use…" The words died on his lips as the enemy ship seemed to erupt with firepower after several seconds of doing nothing but evasive movements and calmly shooting down the incoming missiles with its point defence lasers. "Well, we finally figured out what some of those gun barrels are for." He mumbled to himself as he watched the displays.

What his computer scans said were over a dozen high-yield continuous beam microwave lasers connected the Coalition vessel and the two approaching Earth Force ships for several seconds. For these several seconds, nothing seemed to be happening except the EA ships falling silent. Then the lasers exited the back end of the EA warships as they literally peeled/melted apart at the edges, their reactors exploding spectacularly. This was the result of how thoroughly the laser beams from the rapidly manoeuvring Coalition warship had sliced up the inside. After all, while conducting evasive manoeuvres, they couldn't or rather didn't bother to keep the laser paths completely to a given set of lines through the EA vessels.

The next warship to get it was the _Persephone_, which had ceased responding to orders about five seconds ago and also gone silent, the reactors shutting down seemingly spontaneously (a la Caprica). The Coalition ship sent off a volley of five bolts that seemed similar to pulse cannon bolts but also had shifting, erratic signatures he couldn't get a read on. The nearest ship able to fire its interceptors (the _Pournelle_ was still trying to un-weld some of its turrets and missile tube doors from the hull), the _Rochester_, did its best to not the bolts fly by. It turned out the enemy plasma cannon fire was either too fast to track, or, in the case of the one that actually was hit by an interceptor bolt, seemed to absorb it and continue on its path completely unaffected. After that they were too fast for the turrets to even turn around to track them before they would hit the _Persephone_, which was eerily not firing back and seemed to be unaware of the incoming danger. Drake watched as the bolts were followed by a steady pounding of non-glowing shells that the interceptors knew were out there but somehow just couldn't track accurately .

The _Persephone_ cracked open at the edges when it was hit by the five plasma blasts at once in the forward half. Fragments flew off the splintering hull while other bits left as molten blobs, a cloud of vapour, or a jet of high-pressure plasma. The Scathis Proton Artillery shells raked over the rear end of the ship and blew it to bits by detonating after punching through the armour plating. The five Scathis guns who had the target within their firing arcs had only fired two shells each, but it was grossly overkill against an opponent without shields or structural fields, and who was already dead.

Captain Drake estimated that it would take twenty or more Omegas to successfully engage one of these "Coalition" capital ships, since its shield energy signature had decreased by one-quarter since the battle had begun. If the Crusader had had that much firepower to begin with, then he had been soft on them during most of the battle. This was an exploitable trait. However, Drake believed that if they could jump in close enough to surprise and hit the enemy with their plasma weapons, then it was possible that they could do it with fewer than ten warships. The problem was that precision jumps were very difficult to conduct for anyone not Minbari or Vorlon.

The Earth Alliance fleet had been reduced to combat ineffectiveness in less than two minutes and the enemy vessel was looming over him now. Somewhat longer, vastly wider and massively taller than his vessel, it approached on the displays. He had nothing left to throw at the threat, most of his weapons systems were overheating, and some had already failed. The two banged-up Omegas occupying the now badly damaged B5 defenders broke off contact and began moving toward the Coalition vessel before it fired a plasma shell that hurtled by between them. The bolt soaked up interceptor fire with no trouble and continued off into the distance, detonating precisely 150,000 kilometres from the Coalition ship a brief time later. It made its point as both EA warships stopped accelerating. The B5 defenders didn't follow them, opting to retreat to lick their wounds for now.

"We're getting a hail, with visual." Comms reported.

Drake sighed, softly instructing "Open it." His eyebrows went up yet again with the video feed going up on the big screen.

The people that appeared on screen that showed part of the bridge were clearly computer-generated, because there was no way human faces could be that symmetric. Drake was tempted to roll his eyes at the sharp intakes of breath from most of the female crew members and a few of the males at the man that dominated the screen. "This is Fran." _What an odd last name._ Drake thought. "Your fight is over. I have every one of my three hundred and forty anti-ship weapons charged and ready to fire on your fleet. So far, only thirty-six of them have fired. I suggest you leave while you still can. This is your last opportunity. Oh, and send someone to pick up the prisoners later."

Drake looked toward Fire Control, who shrugged and spread his hands glumly. They'd never detected any lock-on traces, on any ship in the fleet, but it was clear that they had been targeted, and targeted to absurd degrees of precision too. Even if he fired first, their shields would negate every attack that could get past their nigh-absurd interceptors. It was time to retreat, humiliated and with his tail between his legs. Swallowing the bitterness rising in him, he instructed over fleet communications "Retreat…" As they moved toward the Jumpgate, relaying information to the bridge of the _Pournelle_ to help it navigate, he was contemplating how to capture that ship, its technology was obviously much more advanced than Earth Force, in targeting and focus if not in raw yield. Humanity needed that technology to stay ahead of the aliens, to survive…

The Earth Alliance fleet departed through the Jumpgate quite a few minutes and a bit of hassle involving the damaged _Pournelle_, _Cerberus_ and _Hector_ later.

* * *

_Babylon 5 Station, Same Time_

While the EA vessels were struggling to keep their damaged compatriots in line and let them keep up, Babylon 5 and the Coalition crew were communicating.

"Greetings, Babylon 5, I am Grand Crusader Xavier Fran, representing the Coalition of Species, we have picked up most of the crew members of the Earth Alliance ships and most of your wounded are also in our care." Those people had gone into medical stasis as soon as they arrived and the CMO was supervising the machines taking care of them since there were so many and their physiology was so different from that of Coalition humans. Anti-transport barriers had been down on all the Coalition ships involved in the battle, something normally never permitted in Coalition doctrine, but they'd only dropped the flagship's barriers long enough to get the wounded over. "And yes, as your crews reported to you, we did use matter transport technology to save many of them. Our small-craft are cleaning up the battle space as we speak."

Sheridan opened his mouth but found there wasn't much to cover about the help needed "Thank you for your assistance, Grand Crusader. You have some pretty nice stealth technology there." He noted as he observed debris disappearing into nowhere.

The _exceedingly_ handsome man inclined his head agreeably "Thank you for the compliment. We've picked up some of the more severely wounded B5 inhabitants as well, and will be treating and releasing them over the next few days."

Sheridan nodded "Thank you for that. If it's not too rude to ask, could you tell us why you decided to help us?"

Fran smiled a little "To crush the hand of tyranny, of course. We initially came to this area of space as an exploration mission, but we observed that intervention was needed. We can talk more about this later if you'd like."

"Okay then."

"See you later." The other side cut the communications.

"Sir, can we trust them?" Lieutenant Corwin asked.

Sheridan snorted "Can we afford not to? They took out a whole mass of Earth Alliance destroyers with ease, and they could have taken on more if he'd ordered weapons free from the start. And these small-craft he mentioned, their stealth is such that we're not detecting THAT." He pointed at the display where pieces of debris next to a B5 scanner array were disappearing. "No one does anything for free, but right now they're willing to help us. We can only hope they continue to be willing to do so. Teleportation technology must be minor to them if they announce it to us so clearly and casually. That says we can't afford to spurn these people's help, Corwin, and I am curious about them." _About everything about them…_ "First things first, figure out how the station's doing and help our people outside this station. We will render aid to those people victimized by Clark's dictatorship. We won't be able to depend on others too much in this fight, we got ourselves into this mess so we will be responsible for getting ourselves out of it."

A few minutes later, someone had just announced that the Earth Alliance ships had left when the words turned into a shout of "Seven jump-points are opening near the station!"

* * *

A/N: They might seem broken in the first battle, but remember what I said, a Ship Gantry has _grossly_ higher shields than other Coalition ships of similar size, which means any typical Coalition fleet would take real damage from EA weapons, and if they get hits in with the plasma or pulse cannons, that's going to HURT (and yes, a good few Coalition ships will be destroyed by local weapons if this occurs).

**Attractiveness is directly related to degree of symmetry, which is an indicator to genetic quality in terms of resistance to mutations in development. With Quantum Age modifications included in their genomes, regardless of whether or not time travel was involved, the Coalition, Asari and Quarians might as well be computer-rendered ideals by local standards.**

REVIEW!


	6. Meeting Face To Face-slash-Other

A/N: This fanfiction can be taken as, in significant part, a fanfic of a fanfic, but **not as dark**. It references AlbertG's **A Universe of Change** series quite a bit, with a advanced power that has more rationality than Star Trek ever will.

HOLY SHIT I MISSED 3 ZEROES IN LAST CHAP'S START A/N! (Has been corrected) The Infinite War cost 4 trillion lives, averaging 9 Megadeaths per day.

**I put the cover for this fanfic up, a larger version can be found on DeviantArt, **just look for my profile over there (also Guardian54) and you can find it easily under "**Supreme Commander: Babylonia Fanfic Cover**" (or just search that title). Please give feedback on it. Thank you. This Chapter's title alludes to Spacebar's review on Ch 3.

* * *

Chapter 6: Meeting Face To Face/Other

_CSC Surveyor, Epsilon Eridani System, Local date April 16, 2260, Coalition date March 27, 3872_

They had decided not to reveal to Sheridan that they could detect targets in Slipspace, but they were picking up six large signatures and a smaller one. According to Commander T'Soni, this was Delenn bringing reinforcements, so they didn't begin the firing sequences on any weapons when the Slipspace portals opened almost on top of the station. They would have arrived as the second Earth Alliance wave did, but now they were 20 minutes later than they should have been. The only thing the Coalition crew had to do was manoeuvre Gantry Five out of the way of the opening Slipspace portals, or, as locals called them, Jump-points.

What had, before said dramatic entrance, seemed more pressing to them was the scanner data. Kelly, Miranda, Helena and Caprica were all exclaiming to the effect of "what the fuck was the Earth Alliance thinking attacking a station with so many alien species on it?" "How many wars would they have dumped themselves into?" and other such things. They did however stop grumbling when the Minbari ships arrived.

Xavier had at the time been reviewing the scan results of the station and analysis they had done long beforehand. It was eight kilometres long with rotating sections creating simulated gravity, and several environmental sectors for different life-support requirements. Given the state of technology in this place, it was an impressive construct. He shifted his attention to the displays as the Minbari ships arrived. Yes, he had many weapons barrels on Gantry One, and indeed all his other hidden gantries, pointed at them, but as they were in front of him more than half of them would have been pointing their way anyhow. None of them were charging, in fact, the ship's general targeting toggle had been set to "Hold fire" and even if they weren't the Minbari IFF would identify them as friendly and no shots would be fired their way anyhow.

"This is Ambassador Delenn of the Minbari, _Babylon Five_ is under our protection, leave or be destroyed."

"This is Grand Crusader Xavier Fran, please power down your weapons. _Babylon Five_ has been taken care of already, do not engage us." Xavier saw Delenn's eyes widen angrily. _Ah fuck, I walked into that one didn't I? Sounds like it's just been conquered or something._

Delenn shrugged "Why not? Only one Human captain has ever survived battle with a Minbari fleet. He is behind me. You are in front of me." Her eyes narrowed "If you value your lives, be somewhere else. If Sheridan isn't completely fine right now, then you will be held responsible."

"Call him then, or let him call you, but remember, though human ships have not survived previous encounters, there is always a first time." She said something to her crew and Kelly put text on the screen that said they had been locked onto. They stared each other down before Xavier barked, not taking his eyes off the screen "Kelly! Engage whatever systems you need to and break their lock. Make our locks obvious to them, and boost shield regen as able."

From sensors on Babylon Five and even on the Minbari warships, the target signature dimmed sharply, then winked out like a light. Delenn was first to look away for this reason as her crew called in alarm.

In the meantime, on Xavier's side, Kelly, who was at the helm, started broadcasting telepathically to the rest of the bridge crew (basic psychic and telekinetic capacity was ubiquitous among the Aeon) regarding the analysis of the Minbari warships. It was quite unsettling, if a Battle Cruiser or Escort Carrier was hit for more than a few seconds of sustained fire from one of those ships' main guns, it would be destroyed. A Ship Gantry could withstand the attack for a longer time, but the neutron beam cannon was still very, very dangerous. The gravity cleaver beam the Minbari had was on the other hand absolutely useless against Coalition technology due to their artificial gravity and inertial manipulation systems having in-built protection against such attacks. It had been a lesson learnt from the use of "Singularity Launchers" by militaries way back when artificial gravity was first invented.

As for the cruisers' secondary batteries, they were more neutron-based weapons and a few plasma beam weapons apparently based on hydrogen, which meant thermonuclear fusion at target. The Coalition generally used the opposite end of the spectrum to lower the risk of interception or containment breach before hitting the target. Beams with lower internal pressure in transit were less liable to destabilization, but on impact would build up internal pressure regardless to force a breach as it slows down sharply. Heavy elements allowed the same amount of kinetic energy to be associated with less pressure, but was only really feasible with nanolathing technology available as using mid-weight elements was generally not worthwhile due to lack of reaction at target.

The ship mounted the first sign of quantum tech they had seen so far outside the Coalition, which was good. On the other hand it seemed to use a singularity-based power plant that they had never observed before which had rather less energy output per cubic metre of reactor space compared to Coalition quantum reactors.

* * *

_White Star One, Local date April 16, 2260, Coalition date March 27, 3872_

Delenn had re-entered _Babylon Five_ space to find it cluttered with the remains of Earth Alliance vessels. Her ship's sensors picked up a large, bulky battleship sitting at a short distance from and facing _Babylon 5_. She assumed the worst—that seemed generally a good idea with respect to events on and near the station—which was that it was some new technology of Clarke's used to subdue the station and try to wage war on the other races in the name of human dominance. However, there didn't seem to be any material to the ship other than the fact that its hull was there, its weapons were clearly outlined against the vacuum of space, and it registered an absolutely massive power signature. That block on their scans was unprecedented and unexpected… What allies did Clark have now and what did it mean for the war?

Delenn didn't know it, but at least the Minbari sensors were doing a hell of a lot better than the Earth Force ships had in being able to pick up any solid material on their sensors at all. The Earth Alliance ships had detected practically nothing, thanks to structural fields and the default configurations of adaptive plating, which even when not active blocked most scans.

After their first exchanged words, she ordered her crew "Lock onto them, prepare to fire if they stay" She initiated a staring match at that. He called to his crew to break the lock and make their lock evident… interesting, he was either very confident and foolish or…

Her tactical display lost a contact just as the sensor officer shouted "Delenn!" _Seems my worst expectations apply here…_ They could back up their claim. "They've disappeared, they've locked onto us, and we can't break it!"

"What? Can't you trace the lock signal?"

"It seems to be coming at our sensors from all directions at once."

"Are you sure it's not a fake signal then? Right, never mind" Even if it was, it still meant the opponent knew exactly where they were.

Fran rolled his eyes on the screen as he listened in "I'm pretty sure Sheridan should be calling you right about now? How about you talk to him about what's been happening here?"

"Delenn, Grand Crusader, hold your fire! Do NOT engage! Please stand down." Sheridan practically yelled after finally rushing back to his station at the bridge (he'd been over at Environmental reviewing some status reports when the Minbari arrived) and getting communications through to the Minbari. "Everyone is friendly, I repeat, stand down, do not open fire!"

"Captain Sheridan, this is Xavier Fran, Coalition Andromeda Command, we will not fire unless they fire on and actually hit us first."

"John, they're Human, what's going on?" Delenn asked, frowning deeply.

"They just saved _Babylon Five_, stand down, everyone."

"We're already stood down, none of our weapons are readying firing sequences, although by default their capacitors are charged or they are loaded, I can't change those settings." Xavier answered immediately. "However, as a sign of goodwill, I will drop passive stealth and camouflage and face my weapons away from the Minbari." The Coalition capital ship reappeared several thousand kilometres from where it had been previously, all of its weapons now elevated to ward the "waist" plane of the ship (for the first half of the ship) or pointed backward toward the massive emergency thruster blocks. The slower-traversing weapons were still rotating to do so as they watched.

Delenn never stopped frowning, but nonetheless she said "We will stand down." They closed their gun ports and began powering down their weapons systems.

John Sheridan sighed in relief, there had been enough death here for one day. "Grand Crusader, we would love to meet you, but right now I think we should continue with rescue and recovery efforts. Certain capabilities you have would be most helpful in this regard."

Fran nodded "No problem, Captain Sheridan." He did not mention that they would be using their starfighters to pick up the remaining survivors since he wasn't going to drop teleportation shields again unless Commander T'Soni wanted to personally head out and do something.

* * *

_CAC Gantry One, Epsilon Eridani System, Local date April 16, 2260, Coalition date March 27, 3872_

_1-2 hours after confrontation with the Minbari…_

Nine hours remained before Sheridan could arrange time for a meeting with Xavier, so in that time he decided to be friendly and invite the Minbari captains over for a look-see after he parked his tub at spitting distance i.e. 100 kilometres from _B5_. Surprisingly, one of them, the most senior, accepted and two of the others sent over their executive officers. Xavier, Kelly and Miranda, having shuttled over in a Gemini, stood in the small shuttle bay, suited up in armour with their helmets off (armour life support included a field to contain air within the head area even when the helmet was off, activating as necessary). Ship Gantries had no internal hangar space so their shuttle bays were very small by Coalition standards and the ones that were open when the gantry was packed up were all near the stern.

The shuttle was rather gracefully designed to the three pairs of Aeon eyes watching it settle onto the bay floor after passing through the force field holding air in. Five Minbari slowly exited the craft, surprised at the artificial gravity onboard, if the thoughts they were broadcasting loudly was any indication. "I am Grand Crusader Xavier Fran, welcome aboard Gantry One of the Coalition Andromeda Command. Do you speak English or should I use a translation program?"

It turned out the people they sent all spoke English, as the leader said "I am Lennan, Fleet Captain and Captain of the _Bright Star_. It is an honour to meet you in peace and not war. We all are able to speak English, but thank you for asking." According to Commander T'Soni before they left the _Surveyor_, Minbari were very similar to Humans with regards to sexually-distinctive traits, so from his voice and posture this was a matured Minbari male.

Lennan had realized this Human ship—he doubted the appropriateness of this term—was vastly different from anything he had seen or read of before even while they were approaching. It had seemed like a mishmash of colours and areas that suggested it was put together from modular parts, but the design somehow succeeded in not seeming at all ramshackle. The fact that they didn't even mention the force field separating the inside of the pressurized bay from the vacuum outside suggested it was knowledge taken for granted.

The extremely handsome (i.e. facially symmetric) man in front of the Minbari party nodded. Lennan made a mental note to remind the male officers he'd brought to stop glancing at the two females whenever they thought he wasn't watching them. These women were Humans after all, not Minbari, although he still felt vaguely sorry for them with how they'd probably have to beat off men very frequently. He hoped these humans didn't run a multi-wife society, or the female members of the Grey Council would keep relations frosty like they had with the Centauri. "I too am overjoyed that we have chosen to meet in peace instead of war. Please feel free to ask us any questions you may have."

"If this is Gantry One as you call it, are there more of these ships in the area under stealth?" Lennan asked, merely curious and not nearly as alarmed as he expected himself to be at the prospect.

"Yes, we have a few more, and our flagship is of a different class of ship, smaller but packing similar firepower. We kept them under stealth because we didn't want to alarm anyone, and with the tension at our meeting, if we had revealed them as a gesture of goodwill, I feared it would backfire in our faces. Most of the Andromeda Command's personnel are aboard our flagship, the _Surveyor_, which is stealthed and holding position ten thousand kilometres from _Babylon Five_. We could take a tour of this packed-up ship gantry first if you'd like, or we can go directly to the _Surveyor_ if you'd like to meet my crew. We have the time if you do."

Lennan felt taken aback at how open these people were being "That is a remarkably open proposition, Grand Crusader, and I thank you for it. I am at your disposal for as long as you would have me and my people aboard your vessels."

"Alright, this Gantry doesn't have too many facilities, but I'll show you what we do have…" They passed through several empty corridors with doors on either side "These are the crew quarters, each person gets their own bedroom and bathroom. On the Command Deck as you might call it is a large lounge and a small library room for people who prefer to read material books and such that they can hold in their hands, feel, and in some people's cases smell. We have a weapons range going across the length of the main hull, and we have eight arms that deploy outward from the main hull when the gantry is deployed to construct ships or more gantries. Due to the need for space and surface area those arms represent when compacted, we don't have any real hangars per se for small-craft, so they just attach to the outside of the hull. The arms are studded with weapons emplacements and are on the inside filled with a combination of residential and agricultural facilities in the narrower sections, mostly the latter. A good chunk of the main hull's volume is also dedicated to agricultural spaces. We are essentially self-sustaining with respect to food and can expand our facilities to support the demands of a fully packed population if necessary."

"This gantry sounds like something out of a fiction involving refugee fleets, the way you are presenting it." One of the younger officers commented, Lennan frowned briefly at him until the orange-haired woman laughed and the two black-haired Humans smiled.

"Thank you for the compliment. We only grow producer-level staple foods and vat-grown meats in the facilities. For wild or free-range consumer-level foods of all sorts, like fish, squid, insects or birds, we make supply stops on planets and stock up our storages. Please observe." They opened the doors to one of said facilities after descending a flight of emergency stairs ("The elevator detour would take longer").

It was an impressive ship in Lennan's opinion, but more impressive was the second ship they went to. Both ships suggested refined technology taken more or less for granted, but it was the crew interactions and how well they interacted that was surprising. It suggested generations of contact and coexistence between the species. They were invited to dinner and most of the dishes were quite nice (also a surprise for the Minbari). The expected tension was absent from the assortment of Humans and aliens on the other side of the mess table, which was intriguing given they had almost shot at each other. They had different insignia on their upper arm patches, Lennan noted, perhaps signalling different branches of a service? But there were so many different patches… "May I ask what the patches on your upper arms indicate?"

"They indicate the faction or in some cases group we identify most with within the Coalition, , followed by our Coalition Rank, Factional Rank, Command clearance and Marine clearance levels. Most often the faction we choose is the factional choice of our parents or at least one of our parents." Xavier answered.

Lennan noted he wasn't going to continue and baited his hook for information "It sounds like our caste system, because some children decide to go into different castes from the one their parents came from, although this is rare."

Since it wasn't critical (or, at the moment, relevant) intel, Xavier let them know it "Interesting… we have four major factions, two minor factions and a number of other groups also represented in the Coalition Parliament or who we have contact with, though the major factions make all the major decisions. How many castes do you have?"

"Religious, Worker and Warrior castes, we all participate equally in the Grey Council and are essentially equal in social stature." Lennan added the equality parts to make sure these Humans didn't make the mistake some Earth humans had made with regards to the castes of Minbari society. Some of them had once thought it was like the hideous hierarchical system that had at one point existed in some Earth countries, the most common reference being India.

The conversation continued with respect to what species the various members of the crew were. The Minbari got a great surprise when the Zerg representative came out from behind the kitchen counter holding a platter of dessert and shuffling along on his hind legs. However, it seemed his brown carapace prevented them from overreacting. After they were done introducing the races of most of the crew, Lennan said that "I am most impressed by you, your ships and your crew, Grand Crusader Fran. It is most fortunate that you elected not to involve yourselves in the war."

Xavier shrugged, although his two-centuries-plus of experience said that Lennan was testing the waters regarding his knowledge of the Earth-Minbari war. It would be good to hear it from the mouths of the Minbari military, and to do that he had to act ignorant. "We would have preferred not to involve ourselves in your politics, but allowing the current Earth regime to take Babylon Five would have been morally unacceptable for us. We would have like to negotiate with them, but… they weren't open to the prospect."

"I was referring to our war with your people. We would have had more of a challenge if you had been present."

_No, no you wouldn't, you would have been overrun within a day._ Xavier thought grimly. "I was not aware of a conflict between your people and Earth, when did this war happen?"

The Minbari all wore expressions of surprise and the Aeon and other psychics in the room felt the emotion practically bursting off of them. "You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?" He rubbed his eyes to make sure he wasn't misjudging the curious expressions on the faces of the humans "You really ARE from very far away…"

Xavier nodded grimly "We're not from this area of space. We've come a long way. Now, could you tell us about the conflict between the Minbari and the people of Earth?" It would be nice to get more information than what was on the Internet. And it turned out that they did get more information, because they found out about how the Minbari had basically lashed back in response for a hostile First Contact plus what they saw as a presidential assassination. It had then turned into a subject of shame to many with how they had just been making an example of the race that dared strike against the Minbari.

However, Xavier was having a hard time understanding how grossly underwhelming Earth Alliance sensors were. If they could optically see the damned target, they should be able to target it with laser-based radar if nothing else. When he asked about this, Lennan answered that they had used their manoeuvrability advantage to evade Earth Alliance weapons fire due to the delays inherent in light-based targeting. They also often stayed out of EA weapons ranges and cut them apart, and it took until the Earth Alliance began fitting jump drives to their ships that the war became less of a curb-stomp and more of a real fight since the Earth Alliance began jumping in on the faces of the Minbari. "Couldn't you just cut them in half as they exited by opening an opposite-polarity jump point matching their jump point after half their hull has exited?" Xavier had extrapolated from the typical tech level of this area. "Or alternatively figure out a way to make their jump points collapse on top of them?"

"The timeframes for actual entries or exits are too brief for that first proposal to be easily workable, but we did collapse jump points… they would trick us and, while our closest ships' drives were still in the refractory period and local space energy emissions made it hard to spot new jump points forming and relay the data to other ships accurately, use their second-wave warships to open jump points for their whole fleets." Lennan figured that this human could probably easily get records to that effect from Sheridan anyhow if they were to be allies, so to establish a closer friendly relationship between this Coalition's representatives and the Minbari, he could speak freely.

The strategy back-and- forth concluded soon thereafter and the Minbari were escorted on a brief tour for the various drive cores the ship sported. These included the two "Hyperspace Drives" i.e. Slipspace drives, a large Mass Effect core (the Minbari wondered if Element Zero was like the composite material known as Quantium-40, to which they answered no, not quite), a Warp core and two large Quantum Drives. They were not shown the full-sized Paragon Resource Generator, nor were they told that it existed. The Minbari asked about the mechanisms by which the other FTL methods worked, and Xavier's reply covered everything while saying nothing: "Element Zero allows removal of relevance of mass and by digging into mass-free dimensions of space allows FTL transit along said corridors. Warp drive submerges us in a bubble of subspace, sort of like how Slip… well, Hyperspace to you, works. Quantum Drives basically teleport an object from one place to another, the ship can run fine on one of the two drives for Slipspace or Quantum, the second's there for backup and use when the first is down for maintenance." In other words, if the first has been shot to hell. This was something only incorporated on more recent Coalition warships i.e. post-Covenant War. The ships didn't self-destruct _nearly_ as promptly as they used to after structural fields failed.

After the tour was over and Lennan's lot left with many thanks, they contacted Delenn and told her that they were going to uncloak another of the ships they'd brought with them to B5 space. It was easier than letting her hear about the additional vessel from Lennan. She didn't have much of a choice but to glumly accept the Coalition 3872 Battle Cruiser revealing itself near the Ship Gantry still parked in space.

* * *

_Babylon Five, Epsilon Eridani System, Local date April 16, 2260, Coalition date March 27, 3872_

_Ten and a half hours after initial confrontation with the Minbari…_

The black and red, angular, insectoid shape of the Gemini Aerospace Superiority Fighter they'd used as a shuttle seemed to arouse some sort of instinctive negative reaction from the locals as it entered Babylon 5 and landed on the berth assigned to them, guided by some sort of magnetic containment field that worked as this sector's tractor beams. The craft was thirty metres wide, thirty-five metres long, fifteen metres tall (to the tips of the tail fins) resting on its wing tips/edges, and was currently employing no stealth, camouflage, or even adaptive plating.

(A local Starfury was about 10 metres long, around 16 metres across, and about 8 metres tall)

The B5 command crew were in the landing bay, but Captain Hiroshi and Major Ryan were on their badly-damaged ships supervising repairs (the Coalition had removed their Asylums, including destroyed hulks where they weren't vaporized, before repairs started). They had both decided to stay and rally the Resistance at B5 as this Coalition had some powerful technology that could be nice to get on their side. The battleship near B5 and the smaller heavy cruiser could probably cut their way through any blockade force Clark could afford to station at any one of the nearby Jumpgates as there were enough gates and EarthForce was stretched thin enough already.

The eyes of Captain Sheridan, Commander Ivanova, Doctor Franklin, Security Chief Garibaldi and Ambassador Delenn, plus several security guards, followed the "shuttle" as it set down. The menacing lines suggested it was more a fighter than a shuttle, and the huge wing surfaces said it was probably an aerospace superiority fighter. "Almost reminds me of Shadow colours and pronged construction, except they never use any colour except black, don't have any visible cockpits, and their curves are a lot smoother, more biological." Delenn noted. She had originally come because she wanted to meet these Humans who had technology able to lock on perfectly to Minbari ships.

The chin of the shuttle opened and formed a ladder down to the deck, but the people coming down simply jumped down in front of the ladder and landed gracefully. Xavier Fran was first to jump and didn't bother bending his knees from the five-metre drop, wearing curvy green and white power armour complete with slab-like shoulder pauldrons and looking to the B5-ers like a poster for some sci-fi film or game. After the Grand Crusader came a dark-skinned man in somewhat less bulky but rather blocky grey and blue armour. Jacob was followed by Ahn-Ullehesh, the resident Seraphim representative and Master Chef—the female might be a trained lawyer and diplomat, but her "hobby" was sufficiently skilled to get him the main job out of all the volunteers who applied, based on the lack of a main chef for the ship at the time. She wore Seraphim Light Armour, navy blue and indigo plates with light yellow highlights and structural field/shield emitter circuitry patterns across the surface.

Notably, shortly after the Covenant War ended, infantry armour adaptive plating systems had finally been made to work out, so now for friendlier first contacts one actually had to pay attention to shutting those down first. It was almost historically stereotypical for wartime research to only finish once the war was over, even though the Coalition didn't have much experience in that respect given the Infinite War and all the research that had occurred during it…

The last person to descend the ramp wore no apparent armour but white and green gown-like clothes with long hexagonal red gems embedded in the front and back practically in the center of her torso. The front of her bright green hair formed a prow that curved over her face and arched down to just over her mouth with the bulk of it arranged over her head in a solid shield. Lobes of the hair formation came around on either side of her head under two pairs of white horn-like organs. These rested one set above the other under her pointed ears. The only part of her ensemble that disrupted the green and white colour scheme that extended even to her porcelain skin was the black armbands worn her upper arms, emblazoned with some sort of red triangular logo from what the B5 crew observed before they swung their attention back to the leader.

Sheridan found that he could read one set of command ranks (Coalition Fleet Rank System) reasonably easily despite its differences from anything he'd seen before. The other set of ranks… he had a hard time with, since all of the upper arm pads had different symbols on top (Factional Rank) with two separate numbers underneath (C and N ratings, but he didn't know that). "On behalf of _Babylon Five_, thank you for coming to our aid." He said to the two surprisingly young-looking men and the two aliens. "These are the main members of my command crew, my second-in-command Susan Ivanova, Security Chief Michael Garibaldi, Chief Medical Officer Stephen Franklin and Ambassador Delenn of the Minbari Federation."

"It was a pleasure to stop the hand of tyranny. These are the major factional representatives of our Coalition, Jacob Taylor of the UEF, Ahn-Ullehesh of the Seraphim Republic—for the record she's female, if you're wondering—and Liara T'Soni of the Cybran Nation. Liara is my co-commander and will be our main contact to you simply as she knows more about this area of space than the rest of us."

"Ms. T'Soni." The B5 crew bowed their heads toward her once in respect.

She shook her head, her hair remaining amazingly stationary relative to her head for the manoeuvre—Sheridan wondered how much hair spray she'd used, and she picked up the thought, though she didn't show her amusement. "Just T'Soni will suffice."

"We'd be up a very nasty creek without a paddle if you hadn't been here, but I must warn you that you've made some dangerous enemies."

"On behalf of the Coalition of Species, I can tell you that we were glad to help. It was not our intention to enter this dispute lightly, Captain. We've been monitoring the situation in this sector for two weeks now, and we've found it rather unpleasant."

"I don't recognize your ship designs or uniforms, and your technology is astonishing, but you speak English. Exactly where are you from?" Sheridan asked, almost radiating genuine curiosity as far as the whole Coalition entourage was concerned, even though Jacob barely had any psychic capability, having specialized his mind and physiology for biotic use. They had decided not to block off psychic transmissions for this first contact like they usually would when out in public—otherwise the psychic background noise level was usually enough to be annoying—so they were listening in on the locals' loud thoughts "And what is the Coalition of Species? I've never heard of it before."

"The Coalition is very, very far from here. It was originally formed by the UEF and Cybran Nation almost twenty-seven years ago as a last resort against the encroaching forces of the Seraphim Imperium. The Aeon Illuminate and the Seraphim Republic, then the Separatists, joined forces with us shortly thereafter." Xavier told him, already planning on telling him the truth once they were in a more private place.

Someone was more paranoid than the others, for Garibaldi said flatly, with a frown "As far as I know, pretty much everybody who has gone into space has been accounted for in the last three hundred years, unless you count the Humans that have been kidnapped in the late twenty and early twenty-first century. Even then, there weren't that many people. I have never heard of this organization or its factions, not even a hint."

Commander T'Soni smirked "You wouldn't have, they haven't had relations of any sort with the Earth government here for a bit over two hundred and fifty years." Around year 2004 had been when, in Coalition-Earth's history, the probe the Vorlons had sent had finally failed and stopped the Vorlons from doing any more synchronizing. Subsequent probes were detected and destroyed before they could be of any use.

"So you're a lost colony that just happened to have forces wandering around B5 at this point in time?" Garibaldi pressed. "But that doesn't work right, we didn't even have interplanetary exploration back in 2010…"

Commander T'Soni's mind flinched slightly as she recalled all she'd seen—been allowed to see, really, by the Multiverse—as to the history of how, why and when things had played out that led to these humans arriving at the present point in their history. She picked up the fond thought of Sheridan toward his Security Chief's paranoia and its ability to poke out the truth. "No, we deliberately came to this sector to explore, listened in on the local news, decided we didn't like it, and chose to help the obviously morally correct side since it was perfectly within our capabilities to do it without straining ourselves, if you want the practical reasons." She shot back. "Although I do think the gateway left to us by the ancients that we used to get here was a bit sketchy. Using a Primary Mass Relay within shallow Slipspace felt contrary to half the physics we'd explored, but it was a learning experience, and we shut the gateway down permanently after we came through. The construction of a decent transit link to our home is going to take a while, so we're here on our own at least for now."

Sheridan opened his mouth, took a moment, then said "Okay then…" _I need to brush up on hyperspace physics…_ he thought privately (and therefore much more quietly than usual).

Xavier flicked his eyes toward Commander T'Soni and basically unleashed her on the locals. "After assessing the local situation, we determined that it would be best if we safeguarded _Babylon 5_ from the clutches of the various _shady_ powers out there at the moment operating from the _shadows_. It would have been nice to meet a sector not embroiled in war with itself." The Legendary Commander took a deliberate stab at Delenn to see if she got the reference.

And Delenn did understand that these people knew more about the situation than they were letting on, as her reply suggested "A less holier-than-thou attitude would be nice." She was tempted to snort at her own dry words, since the vast majority of Minbari had a habit of being that way to the younger races.

The green-haired woman shrugged "Understanding is the first step to recovery…"

"A less adversarial attitude would also be nice." Delenn noted just as dryly as last time, mentally noting that it could also apply to a lot of Minbari.

Commander T'Soni smiled, nodded, and extended her hand "I am glad to see that you are, like Lennan, far less snooty than the archetype for your people. If the Minbari ever decide to send an ambassador to the Coalition, he would be quite welcome. It will be a pleasure to work with you for the peace and prosperity of this sector."

"I never said…"

"No, but you implied it. If you wanted us to leave, you would not have used the term 'would be nice', which implies at the very least neutrality toward the prospect of continuing to work together. It would be nice of us all to not judge a book by its cover, but to read it instead. We may seem aggressive and sometimes confrontational in our approaches, but we have our reasons. If you want us to leave you alone, then we will, but you'll be missing out on a large opportunity from a not only technological but also social perspective, including the opportunity to observe a societal system in action that has effectively advanced beyond scarcity and has remained snugly together even after the war that brought it together ended. If I am correct, the latter is the objective you are striving for here at _Babylon Five_. War is coming, Ambassador, to this sector, and we all know it. The question is, can we find a way through it that allows most species in the sector to survive and prosper together as, at worst, friendly rivals?"

Properly chastised and baited with something she couldn't possibly refuse, the Minbari had no choice but to bite "You seem to know more about what I'm thinking and desiring than I do, Ambassador—" The woman held up a hand with a friendly but chastising smirk and Delenn changed it to "T'Soni, you may be correct in our initial assessments of each other. I would like to get to know more about you and your people."

"Our medical capabilities may be of interest to you too, given the fact that you still have that broken leg ten hours after you broke it." Xavier interjected, looking at Garibaldi, "Jacob?"

"Mr. Garibaldi, may I?" Jacob gestured toward the leg in a brace and cast. The Security Chief kept his eyes on the black man as if looking at a predator about to pounce.

"Michael's one true weakness is doctors." Sheridan commented with a smile as he watched his Security Chief squirm.

"Thanks a lot, Captain." Garibaldi groused good-naturedly as most of the people in the landing bay chuckled or smiled.

"My armour includes an analyzer and injector assembly for what we call medi-gel." Jacob pushed a few buttons on the holographic interface he'd projected from his armour's chest plate. "It will repair most injuries without trouble after targeting and a very brief calibration, and the bio-degradable nanites soon break down after injection. They are then disposed of by phagocytic cells that recognise them as cellular debris and digest them. The solution injected into the target area also includes the necessary materials used in wound repair, so don't worry about that. It can even be used to reattach severed limbs assuming armour is there to hold it in place." Jedore had only gotten injured like that back then because she had still to acclimate to Coalition hardware and had taken a lot of damage already. "With your permission, we can demonstrate what it can do."

"I really don't like the idea, or reality for that matter, of alien technology being pointed at me." Michael growled.

Since the locals didn't have any weaves built into their physiology, it was easy to scan them even at range "You're starting to hurt from the painkillers fading, you have multiple bruises, some liver damage, and a bunch of healed-over broken ribs, not to mention your fractured wrist and broken leg-slash-ankle." Jacob had to instruct his device to repair the tissues only to what was considered normal for the genetic makeup behind it instead of what the machine thought a human's physiology should be like. The harder part was using a set of nanites tailored to the immune systems of these humans here, which were relatively weak in what they could digest.

"You can tell all that so quickly?" Garibaldi asked. Xavier and Liara both felt that it was almost a mental shout of shock, Ahn registered his astonishment, and Jacob picked it up. Obviously, the locals weren't used to telepaths or empaths being everywhere. Asari could be either category, and a few Sangheili and San'Shyuum were able to pick up adequately loud thoughts, so the Citadel Races and Covenant Races had all been taught to keep their thoughts from broadcasting practically from birth.

"I don't do much beyond basic field-medicine medi-gel work, advanced surgeries and such are up to our Chief Medical Officer and some other, more qualified members of our crew." Jacob answered "But yes, the scanners can tell that so quickly, now may I see your limbs?"

Garibaldi frowned, thinking "Well, I don't like Doctors because they tend to make everything hurt more, if you want to be added to my hate list, go ahead. Franklin has to watch everything you do though, if he says stop, then just stop, don't even think about it."

"Alright. Please keep all weight off the leg and ankle, or you'll feel a momentary tingling which may be a bit unsettling." Jacob extended his arm near the injured limb and a small amount of some sort of greyish liquid exited it, seemingly sinking through the cast and sinking into the limb around the site of the break "You should feel the difference within seconds."

The pain disappeared within the next few seconds as neurons finally realized the damage was gone. The leg was movable again, with essentially no discomfort other than slightly annoyed muscles. It didn't even feel weak as some part of Garibaldi's brain insisted it should be. He gaped a few times like a fish as he tried putting weight on the leg and it held just fine without pain. It had been broken a bit above the ankle and the ankle had also been broken, but now it was decidedly no longer broken "Uh…" He said ever-so-intelligently.

"Can I give you some more repairs?"

"Yes." Franklin said before Garibaldi could even get over his shock. The security chief simply nodded numbly.

"Try to stand still for this one." The broken wrist was fixed shortly thereafter, and so were the facial scars. Something seemed to shift a bit in his ribcage, and he felt overall much healthier than he had previously as the fluid, if it could be called that, entered several areas of his body and scattered itself over the scars on his face, which shrank and vanished in seconds. "Well, your liver will probably need another day or two to fully renew to perfect health for your genetic level, but the scars are gone from both your skin and your bones. I left the bruises there for now, if you want them gone I can get rid of them too." The rest of the command crew looked dumbstruck.

"Thank you… but no thank you, I want to keep those to remind myself to teach the Narn troops some decent tactics." Garibaldi was grinning as he took the leg brace off and began getting rid of the cast. "Well, Mr. Taylor, I take it back, you're the best doctor I've dealt with in a very long time."

"Mr. Taylor, can we talk?" Franklin looked like he had seen the best thing since sliced bread.

Sheridan leaned close and wiped the star-struck look off his CMO's face, towing him back to the ground forcibly with "Careful there Stephen, nerd-gasms are usually not considered a good thing on first contact." That earned him a dirty look from the good doctor. Across the gap between the two groups, Ahn's mouth twitched a little, unnoticed by the B5 crew but clearly noted by the Coalition crew who were used to Seraphim physiology. They were all mentally privately laughing at the comment, which they'd picked up thanks to their optionally-elevated hearing (they could consciously control their ear structures a bit) compared to the local humans. "I think we all need to talk." Sheridan said at a more normal volume.

"The book seems to have opened, the inside of the front cover appears agreeable enough." Commander T'Soni stated.

"Excuse me for asking this, but what could we possibly have to offer you compared to what you can offer us?"

"You can offer an ideal to this sector, peace and stability. If that's not enough, the Coalition thrives on friendly competitors, and the alliance you build could be one of those for us." Commander T'Soni stated bluntly and honestly.

Delenn smiled for the first time at the Coalition group "I'd like to apologize for my behaviour earlier. I think we can all agree that you are more than welcome to _Babylon Five_." The meeting would last another half an hour before Commander T'Soni wrangled the B5 crew into letting her stay onboard to help with security during the reorganizing of the station. She had stated that "some things that go bump in the night need to be eliminated before they can cause us trouble" and "I'd like to see if I could reasonably get a meeting with Kosh".

* * *

A/N: Responses to Reviews! (TL:DR for most readers, please skip if you want)

**Spacebar**: First 3 points = ah, okay then, though the Coalition does SORT of use a central living controller i.e. ACU pilots :P. 4: If I went the stealthy way, they would not be looking for ghost ships unless the Coalition was baiting them. No, instead, some areas of space would rapidly develop a reputation for spontaneous random explosions on ship hulls. 5: I accidentally missed 3 zeroes in the Infinite War death count, so… please point out anything that doesn't seem right to you. The short-interval jumping will be used to great effect (they would have done this during the Covenant War had the need to keep control of the opponent's location not usually been more important). That's assuming the Coalition keeps its stealth (non-EM) and camouflage/adaptive plating (Full EM spectrum) systems down and the EA can actually see them. 6: About ballast, will be covered, and amphibious units already have ballast tanks to allow them to sink in water, but not enough to sink into the sediment.

**Nenfaer (Ch 5)**, amazingly, I was actually waiting for you to review before posting another chapter, then I found myself halfway through Ch 6 and needing feedback on Ch 5. Yes, I made a totally retarded mistake with respect to the death toll of the Infinite War, it's **4 Trillion** people. Interceptors vs Projectors shall be seen. Unpacked gantry looks more like Vorlon cruiser than shadow ship with the arrangement of the prongs.

**Nenfaer (Ch 4)**, No, the battle didn't take 20 minutes. However, letting the EA ships get close enough to shoot, and then letting them limp back to the Jumpgate put together took quite a chunk of time. Covenant plasma projectors are 4.5 orders of magnitude higher than the output of a Hiro Dual Plasma Beam turret in terms of yield for one beam (Hiro DPB puts out about 6 kT per beam, 960 damage rating points, firing both beams together at intervals of 6 seconds, 320 DPS per turret) and compared to the Novax Plasma Accelerator (about 60 kT per beam, 8000 damage per beam, 20 sec reload, 400 DPS) is almost exactly 3.5 orders of magnitude higher (190 MT per shot, 20 sec recharge). Unfortunately for the Covenant, Coalition shields and structural fields take damage in essentially logarithmic fashion relative to yield particularly when OUTSIDE the 1-1000 kiloton range. Plasma beam weapons, though better than typical plasma, antimatter or other explosion-based weapons, particularly undirected explosions, suffer badly compared to kinetic or laser weapons in damage efficiency (per yield) against fields and shields. A Plasma Projector also takes up a much, MUCH larger, slower-traversing turret than either of the smaller options. Coalition ship-to-ship warfare employs death by a hundred thousand paper-cuts (or a few million as fighter craft are the main armament for carriers and gantries now) although to most other spacecraft (Covenant capital ships and Council battleships both excluded due to raw shield strength) it's more like a few million hammers to the face.

REVIEW!


	7. Independence Dawns

A/N: **Genetic Quality (resistance to mutations and errors in development) is indicated by external symmetry**, so post-Quantum Age humans, with all their genetic enhancements, would look to us pre-Quantum Age heathens to basically be absolutely gorgeous in appearance. That's why I say these people are "very symmetric".

I am actually committing to making my chapters shorter now (5-7K) so they're easier to read in one sitting! **I expect to get more reviews than just Spacebar, Nenfaer and occasionally a 3rd person on each chap, because you won't forget half the content by the end of the chapter anymore!**

* * *

Chapter 7: Independence Dawns

_Babylon Five, Epsilon Eridani System, Local date April 16, 2260, Coalition date March 27, 3872_

"That's the last of them." Commander Ivanova told Sheridan, who looked refreshed from getting some sleep. "Michael's still seeking out hidden agents though."

"Of course, people have a hard time realizing when they should really give up, especially when they used to enjoy unlimited authority like the Gestapo." Sheridan replied simply as he sat at his station in Command & Control and began going through reports on the progress of the repairs to the station, the _Alexander_ and the _Churchill_. Both ships had been badly damaged despite what the Coalition had told him about putting mobile shield generators on them to protect them as much as feasible.

A while later, Garibaldi arrived and reported that "Everyone's still in shock and things are abnormally quiet, except for the people who are complaining loudly about the lockdown of the communications channels."

Sheridan sighed "You know full well why I shut them down, Michael, Earth could try hacking our computers if we opened them up."

The other man grinned "Well, what I never told you before is that I kept copies of the master access codes, we can reset the system ourselves."

Sheridan smiled at his old buddy "You didn't need to ask me for permission to do that."

Garibaldi shrugged "No, but I felt it was appropriate anyway. Why are you out of uniform?"

"The Earth Force uniform represents what we are fighting right now, the Clark regime. It wouldn't be right for me to wear it… but I will wear the full dress uniform at the funerals later, for the last time."

"Ah, okay…" Garibaldi shuffled a few papers around before looking up again "Are you still going to make rounds later?"

"Yes, of course." Sheridan didn't look up.

Garibaldi dropped the papers in surprise "That's one of the stupidest things I've ever heard of. Any Clark loyalist would see you as a perfect high-priority target to take out."

"But the Commanding Officer's presence in public would help demonstrate to the station's public that we are not afraid. Morale is one of the few things that any successful Resistance must have in abundance, old friend."

Commander T'Soni looked over from where she was standing in the corner "Captain, as long as you wear a basic shield emitter, things should be okay. The Clark loyalists are likely to think making you a martyr would be counter-productive, something downright stupid of them to do, but if you do take a shot or two on your shield I will be there to deal with the gunmen. I've checked your infantry weapons' yields against our shields, and you'll be able to take quite a bit of damage with no trouble this way."

"Do you have any weapons with you, Ambassador?" Garibaldi asked sceptically.

"I prefer 'Liaison', and yes, I do, I have more weapons with me than you would think." She was grinning widely "Rest assured that Captain Sheridan will be perfectly safe from any assault if I come with him on the rounds. Besides, I could use a tour of this station."

Sheridan shrugged "Can't argue with the tour part, rest easy, Michael, I believe she has more than enough power with her to back up her claim, and I'll have a couple other Security troops with me anyway."

While passing through the Zocalo, Commander T'Soni's senses picked up ill intent toward Sheridan from a balcony far above them. "Threat at our two o'clock." She said quietly to Sheridan and the security officers "Do not confront, if he tries to fire, I will block it and return fire."

Sheridan signalled with his left hand for the two guards with him to follow the given instructions and they relaxed slightly. No fire came their way and Sheridan said "It is as you predicted."

"Yes, so it is." She said simply.

* * *

_Babylon Five, Epsilon Eridani System, Local date April 17, 2260, Coalition date March 28, 3872_

The first morning of B5 independence saw the old AI in the computers being reawakened with a full system reboot, and Delenn having trouble recruiting the B5 crew for the Minbari Rebirth Ceremony that she wanted to hold.

Commander T'Soni however, was under cloak and stealth (her only uses for Coalition infantry armour) listening in on Londo Mollari and Lord Refa talk in the Zocalo. Kasumi had alerted her to the man, who was an important Centauri, arriving on the station from the transport records. Liara would rather have sent Kasumi to do this as she was better at it, but the Coalition crew had agreed not to send anyone else onto B5 for the next three days before their next meeting. Even if the locals couldn't detect them, it would be awkward and result in a loss of trust if some hint was ever let slip to the contrary. She had spoken to the Centauri ambassador previously and made it absolutely clear that so long as the Centauri remain belligerent to their neighbours, oppressive, and looking back on the "good old days" like the Roman Empire of Earth's history—complete with drinking and debauchery at celebrations—no technological sharing or even knowledge communications would occur. Londo had surprisingly been in fierce agreement to the policy she'd expounded since he thought the Centauri were engaging in too many wars at once and it was very foolish of them to do this. He did however comment that it would be nice of her to not let rip on his culture _too_ much when they spoke… even if it was the root of the Centauri race's problems.

"Have you spoken with them, Londo? Is it an Earth vessel?" Refa said snottily, Londo's mind was full of hatred for this thing in front of him at the moment, from what emotions he was radiating.

"No, those are not Earth ships. Rumours say they are from a distant, long lost colony…" Londo snorted "a VERY long lost colony."

"Have you contacted their Ambassador?"

"Yes, although she insists on the term 'Liaison' for some reason. She is by far the most interesting person I have met in a very long time…"

"I don't care how interesting she is. I want to know if she can be… persuaded… to share some of their shield technology with the Centauri people." Refa cut him off.

Londo shook his head brusquely "I don't believe so. Besides, that device wouldn't benefit us in the least. We are engaged on far too many fronts already, it has devolved into complete madness."

"Once we have that technology, combining it with our other resources would allow us to keep our people and borders secure." Refa said as if explaining that one plus one equalled two.

"They will not share that technology." Londo was wondering just how stupid Refa was "I had spoken to this T'Soni for quite some time earlier today and the first thing she made clear was that it would not be happening."

"Then perhaps conversation is inadequate, application of force might be more effective in getting what we want from them."

"Have you finally lost it? We are stretched to breaking with all our smaller wars and you want to fight these people who we know almost nothing about?"

"I am sure we could handle them…"

"You are wrong, Refa, we can't do this. What if Mr. Morden's associates decide to attack Centauri Prime while you are here with half the fleet trying to subdue two exploration ships? And do not forget that they are explorers, what would you do when the bulk of their expedition fleet arrives to colonize this area, hmm?"

Refa straightened his towering hair arrangement for the third time since he'd sat down and Commander T'Soni bandied with the idea of throwing a Will-O-Wisp at his head, but the power of the plasma blast going off due to having no bio-electric field to interact and react with would probably turn his head into a frag grenade of steam and bone fragments. That would be bad for Londo's health. It would be bad to harm Mr. Mollari, one of the few vaguely tolerable Centauri she knew of. "If we could capture those two ships and uncover their secrets before the Coalition's main fleet arrives, we will be able to build up enough force to convince them to leave us alone. We wouldn't stand a chance against Mr. Morden's associates anyway, they are the most powerful force I have ever even heard of, but they're on my side and are my allies. I may one day ascend the throne myself. Maybe I could ask them to deal with the Human ships and the upstart humans in general. I—"

"No. You will listen to me. You will not have any more contact with Mr. Morden. You see, your drink is poisoned."

"What?"

_Oh my fucking god Londo Mollari what the flying fuck do you think you're doing?_ Her opinion of the man's intellect abruptly shrank by several orders of magnitude. This was just asking for them to pull something and get him angry enough to contact Morden for revenge on Refa. She quickly sifted through his mind for things he held dear and concluded the target of any strike was likely to be his closest mistress, and it would most likely occur when and if she ever came to B5, just to fling it in Londo's face.

It was only after that conversation ended that she received word that Ambassador Delenn and Senior Captain Lennan had been kidnapped by Nightwatch remnants. This was soon followed by a public broadcast over B5's internal screen network that demanded Babylon Five be returned to "Human control" within six hours or they would kill Delenn and Lennan. They shot a third Minbari to death on the broadcast and Commander T'Soni's smirk only grew. It was time to get back into action, something she thoroughly looked forward to and would enjoy.

She followed the reports of combat that Kasumi was registering on scans to a bar in Down Below, the sketchy part of the station. There she found Lennier and Marcus talking in a bar full of unconscious people about Lennier's crush on Delenn. "Hey guys, are you trying to wrangle some information out of one of these people?" She asked, walking up to the two of them. Lennier gasped "Lennier, for the record, I've seen your kind of love before" she didn't mention that it was during her wanderings as a lost soul through time and realities "and your attraction is a lot more reasonable than that case was, because Delenn actually has a brain unlike the guy that woman had a spark with but eventually fobbed off on someone else partly as they were far too different to ever work. You and Delenn are very different now, she's mostly been genetically reconstructed as human, you are Minbari. Look for a Minbari woman, young one, your dwindling population growth rate demands it." She finished looming over the young man and seemed to abruptly shrink down to her usual stature as she stopped playing with his mind "So, Marcus Cole. I've heard of you from Delenn, and seen pictures of you on the Internet. You're trying to get one of these guys to wake up?"

"Yeah. I heard about your medi-gel thing, so…"

"It usually doesn't work well on brain damage, but this might, and it's a lot more satisfying." She grabbed a bucket of ice that had been emptied of its beverages a while ago, vaulted over the bar to the sink, filled it with cold water "don't tell me you've never heard of the cold water to face technique? It shouldn't take much unless you've actually killed the target or put it into a coma." She tipped the bucket a bit to dump some water onto the face of a thug before righting it again to the sound of hacking and coughing, followed by groaning noises as the guy held his head. Marcus began questioning the thug shortly thereafter.

* * *

_Grey Sector, Babylon Five, Epsilon Eridani System, Local date April 16, 2260, Coalition date March 27, 3872_

_These are the times when I really wish my Origin's cycle's Tali left a copy behind, like she did in that other Command & Conquer-based cycle way back when that I was allowed to see. A Ghost-type could phase right through those walls, as long as they aren't built from multi-phase materials, and get inside that way._ Liara thought bitterly as they showed Nightwatch, through the station's external security camera grid, the Minbari warships leaving—yeah, leaving for about ten minutes—and let them transmit a signal to Earth. It seemed Nightwatch was completely unaware of the fact that Earth was not going to move unless the Coalition warships were neutralized too. As a result these poor pawns on the station had most foolishly counted the Coalition in as Human, in addition to seeing the Minbari warships as the larger threat. It would be their last mistake. "Let me handle this… if you feel either hostage is at risk then you add your fire to mine. The dawn of B5's independence shall drive out the night." She told Sheridan before the Nightwatch people left their room in response to a fake reactor coolant leak. She cloaked and stealthed herself in her Cybran Light Armour and took up both her laser pistols, the preferred weapon for precision short-range anti-unarmoured-personnel operations.

It took a bit under one second for her, using her mind to lock the weapons of the enemies in stasis, to gun down all the members of Nightwatch starting with those closest to Delenn and Lennan. However, she deliberately shot to wound to get captives to interrogate, and had dialled her pistols' power down, which had increased firing rate enough for her to hit all of them in a single second. The station personnel moved in after the targets were down and screaming in pain on the ground. They were checking the downed Nightwatch and securing them when one of the Nightwatch threw a knife toward Sheridan.

Liara was about to snatch the knife out of thin air with her mind when she noted Delenn moving to shove Sheridan out of the way. Instead of removing the threat, she decided to help the woman's relationship, make it easier for the guy to confess, so she adjusted the knife's course slightly so it would seem to catch on one of Delenn's ribs. She slammed a defensive barrier up around Delenn's ribcage in the extremely unlikely event of her missing and partly to reinforce the illusion anyway. Keeping the projectile under guidance the rest of the way there, making minute course adjustments dozens of times per second, she levelled one of her pistols and shot the fleeing man in the foot while everyone else was just reacting to the sudden commotion.

* * *

…_One minute later…_

They weren't sure where exactly the man's nose was in the bloody mass that was his face once John Sheridan was finished pounding him to a pulp. Sheridan had stomped on the man's wrists before grabbing his arms to break them backwards before beginning to pound the man's face until he stopped screaming. He had paused only when Commander T'Soni restrained him to make him put on a pair of knuckle-protecting gloves, citing "Don't contaminate yourself with this filth, in case he has diseases". The Commander had given Delenn's mere flesh wound a dose of medi-gel with calibrations for Minbari physiology as soon as she'd removed the knife, and treated Lennan after giving Sheridan the gloves in question. Both the Minbari were staring at Sheridan, Delenn looking vaguely horrified and Lennan more or less impressed.

Finally, Sheridan seemed to have had enough of beating the barely-breathing mass of flesh "Can you keep him alive?" He asked Commander T'Soni. She nodded as, beside her, Delenn looked down at the Nightwatch man with a frown. "Good, I want to interrogate him properly later, sans violence but with a decent amount of fear on his end… I'm sorry you had to see that, Delenn, not one of my finer moments."

"True lovers, or what some people call true lovers, are always fiercely protective of one another, but it does not kick in until one of them actually gets hurt or is at high risk of getting badly hurt. Do not be intimidated by this show of protectiveness, Ambassador, unless he gets too possessive for your liking at any point or raises so much as a hand against you, in which case chuck him right away." Commander T'Soni said with a broad smirk, thinking _spanking during sex notwithstanding_. Both Sheridan and Delenn blushed, and most of the rescue crew rolled their eyes. Lennan however appears almost slightly perturbed by the idea before literally shaking it off. Privately, Commander T'Soni's more serious opinion was much darker: _I really hope that this is not another "saviour" crew we've come across, because unless they too are on a vacation spawn, and chances are they won't be, their relationship is completely doomed even with me trying to help_. That thought wiped the smirk off her face "Now, who's up for a little spa treatment, er, I mean Rebirth Ceremony?" People stared at her, even Delenn turned around to stare at her and she blinked "What? In the Extended Edition of the Ceremony, you shed a layer of skin using pumice and warm water with scented oils and bath salts. I call that spa-like treatment."

Delenn frowned at this woman's knowledge of the ritual "How did you find out about that? Usually even Minbari only bother with the regular version, reciting words and sharing fruit from Minbar."

"You'd be amazed what sort of stuff goes on the human Internet, Delenn." The Legendary Commander did not bother adding something that would have been funny to watch the reactions to i.e. _Did you know that young human males often spend up to an hour or more a day viewing sexually arousing content online and pleasuring themselves while browsing?_

"I have a feeling I'm glad you didn't give me any examples." Delenn noted.

The left side of the older woman's mouth curled up in a smirk "You are correct to have that feeling."

* * *

_Starboard Forward Hangar Bay, CSC Surveyor, 105 km from B5, Local date April 18, 2260, Coalition date March 29, 3872_

The previous day passed with Commander T'Soni bringing synthetic pumice, salts and oils from her ships so that the whole command crew plus some guests could relax without having to reuse any supplies. The oils had been nanolathed in relatively bulk quantities of solid (very cold) oil plus smaller masses of specific compounds, then melted and mixed together. The salts had been nanolathed in brick form, ground up, and mixed together at appropriate mass and molar ratios. Sure, Coalition nanolathes tended to make any manufactured food taste rather odd as a complex mixture of many different molecules was harder to synthesize accurately than simple repeating molecules, but these extracts weren't a problem to make components of and then assemble since there weren't that many different molecules involved..

The fake pumice was made easily by the machines, and all one had to do to make it look more naturally-shaped than the brick it came in (Commander T'Soni accidentally neglected programming for shape) was stab it with a chisel a few times. The Legendary Commander learnt this the hard way when she tried using her mind on one of the two bricks she'd ordered from the machine and everything other than the masses she'd envisioned was crushed to a fine dust that mushroom-clouded upward from the pile of misshapen rocks she was left with. She had rolled her red-irised eyes at the resulting mess, muttered to herself "Three weeks should have been enough to re-acclimate… but I suppose my power ratings are as broken as they ever were back when my Origin controlled this form…" After a few moments of cleaning, she thought to herself _Ugh, this is messier than when her, my, whatever, un-dead first body disintegrated. At least then the wind blew most of the disintegrating nanites and once-reanimated cells away, and John only had to dust himself off if he wanted to get clean._ She cleaned the dust up with a vacuum and used less messy methods to shape the other brick.

The ceremony went without another hitch, although the Commander declined participation, and today, one day after the ceremony, on local date April 18th, 2260, the shuttle containing Susan Ivanova and John Sheridan approached the _Surveyor_. It was thirty minutes before the public meeting of the Coalition and Earth Force was scheduled to start. The latter party had insisted they be present while the former party had asked them politely to, and this was a direct quote "come watch as we stop Earth's dick-waving addiction dead in its tracks".

"This is shuttle Alpha Three, requesting permission to land, _Surveyor_."

"Alpha Three, this is the _Surveyor_. You are cleared to land, please release controls, we will guide you in." Sheridan had been told of this procedure by Stephen (Doctor Franklin) and Michael (Garibaldi) but it was still a new and interesting experience for him. They passed through the protective double field separating the bay from open space under the gentle force guiding them and artificial gravity faded in gradually over a distance of a few dozen metres as they passed into the tunnel through the outer hull into the hangar.

"Nice gravity control." Sheridan noted as the shuttle entered the cavernous starboard forward hangar bay and descended to its floor several dozen metres below. "That's a lot of rather large fighters." They were looking at rows of ten fighters, five rows tall and three ranks deep, of assorted sizes and descriptions but all attached to anchorage clamps on cross-struts extending from grooves in the walls. "And they have this for probably every hangar bay on this ship…"

"Their confidence should be far from surprising then." Ivanova muttered as the doors opened and they exited onto the speckled-grey floor to see the wall of starfighters tower over them on one side and a whitish, glossy-looking hangar bay wall on the other. "If those fighters are as advanced as their capital ships…"

"Greetings, First Officer Lawson." Sheridan said to the ridiculously beautiful woman standing there waiting for them, Franklin had told him about a lot of the crew members, apparently there was even a blue woman with a cartilage-based head crest instead of hair onboard!

"Good day, Captain Sheridan, Commander Ivanova." Miranda shook hands with the two. "I know this is a bit rushed, but we are expecting visitors, or perhaps a better term would be victims, so I must ask you to prepare yourselves and not respond to the things that the Earth Force representatives will be flinging at you. Please do feel free however to laugh when we smack them in the face with reality. Grand Crusader Fran is already at the meeting room and is waiting for you. Please follow me." She led them beneath the racks of starfighters, a space lit only by floor lights and shadowed from the remarkably soft ceiling lights far, far overhead. The looming power was clearly evident to the two guests "This wouldn't be the usual way of receiving guests, but we're planning on doing this for the Earth Alliance shuttle, what do you think?"

"It is an effective method of intimidation." Sheridan stated with the same sort of smile as was on Ivanova's face.

Miranda returned it "Excellent."

* * *

_CSC Surveyor, 105 km from B5, Local date April 18, 2260, Coalition date March 29, 3872_

The three thousand prisoners had all been put into the port forward hangar bay and had quickly formed a mass near the rear against the outer wall due to the intimidating effect of having a mountain of potentially hostile weapons towering over their heads. The fact that when one of them had the guts to touch one of the strange starfighters in its berth it had _hissed_ at him (through speakers) and thrown him away a bit with a small shift of its wing surface didn't help. These prisoners had been subjected to having Caprica as their invisible-handed jail guard, and they did not find her little joke pleasant. Like every war in local history—and even Coalition history before the advent of ACU warfare—most of the troops were just grunts doing what they were told to do and trying to stay alive. So when the fleet of EA shuttles arrived and landed in the landing bay, they piled in without a backward look, glad to be leaving alive and without any horrific experiments done on them.

As General Brindley's shuttle approached the starboard forward hangar bay, he contemplated the larger battleship that had taken on eight Omegas and prevailed. Its hull was mottled and the weapons varied wildly in colour, but it still seemed intimidating and the knowledge that it had thoroughly trounced a decent fleet of Earth's best warships didn't help. That embarrassing defeat had resulted in Earth Gov demanding more information on this "Coalition" and he had been given this assignment. Somewhere out there was a Human government not subordinate to Earth, a precedent that certainly would not be tolerated by the present regime. The poor lost colony needed to be secured and protected by Earth from whatever alien influences had so obviously tainted them. Family needed to come together again and share in the fruits of that reunion.

The arguments about how to approach these people had lasted over a day, with Clark's opinion that Sheridan's morals would prevent him from firing on the EA diplomatic shuttle holding sway in the end. If this "Grand Crusader" agreed to meet in full sight of B5's population and all the aliens onboard, it was likely that reports back to the alien governments would see this as a sign of weakness on Sheridan's part and a concession by the Coalition. With support dwindling, Earth Force could retake the station if it committed enough warships to the task. Persuasion would be difficult, but not impossible, because surely this Fran—an odd last name in Brindley's opinion—understood that even though his vessels were no doubt powerful, if he didn't agree to Earth Alliances terms then they would be hunted down. Technology like what they had could not be allowed to fall into alien hands.

The General and his two aids, Colonel "Bulldozer" Christov and a covert Psi-Corps P-10 telepath named Harold Truman, disembarked from the shuttle in the cavernous starboard forward hangar bay filled with several ranks of racks of fighter craft, towering ominously over them. Their guide was a young woman with a hood up over her head and a flawless (by local, pre-Quantum Age standards) face, wearing angular black and red armour "Welcome to the CSC _Surveyor_, representatives of Earth Alliance." She said with a bright, innocent smile. "Please come with me."

"Aren't you going to scan us for weapons?" Christov asked haughtily. He was in his late fifties, slightly older than Brindley, and had a reputation for being an aggressive negotiator to say the very least "We wouldn't want to be accused of attempted terrorism on your ship after all."

"Not necessary, we've scanned you already on approach and are continuing to scan you regularly even now." The woman didn't bother looking back as she walked off under the stacks of starfighters that put Starfuries to utter shame in every respect size-wise.

Brindley frowned mentally, their shuttle hadn't picked up anything. No scans were that detailed and undetectable… no, he couldn't be sure of that, or anything else for that matter, in the case of these people. There were no security guards with them as they passed through a door into a wide hallway, crossed it, and entered an elevator directly opposite the door. The woman pushed a button labelled "Command Deck" and the doors closed. The elevator seemed to accelerate upward minutes and then decelerate similarly minutely almost immediately afterward. The door opened to a long window that showed a perspective one "layer" of fighters from the top of the hangar and one layer above the entrance slots that ran along the far side of the hangar. In other words, they were on one of the levels that faced the ass ends of the fourth layer of fighters from the bottom and second from top (total 5 layers)

"That was nice gravity control on that elevator… this is an interesting ship design…" Brindley attempted to start a conversation "I presume it has its own jump engines… how many fusion reactors does it use to move like it does? I'd guess something on the order of twenty…" They had entered another elevator, this one tram-like, and were transported away again toward the rear of the ship.

"Somewhere from zero to infinity, General." The woman deadpanned as she led them out of the tram and he grimaced internally as he was led down a corridor toward the side of the ship. "Welcome to starboard secondary conference room two." Truman was wearing an ugly frown at the moment and Brindley suspected something was rather unexpectedly wrong… but he couldn't blow Harold's cover. Brindley let himself appreciate the predatory swept-forward wings of a starfighter that was presenting a profile view to the huge window until he realized it was Sheridan and Ivanova that were in the foreground on the other side of the table. Fran was at one head of the table and at the opposite end was a woman who looked like she'd walked off a computer screen, such was the symmetry (beauty) she had. Both wore curvy green and white armour, but Fran's was noticeably heavier with larger shoulder pauldrons and overall more bulk. Sheridan and Ivanova looked more comfortable to be here than he'd hoped, and they were in new uniforms, not Earth Force at all.

Christov sat first, eager to begin, and Brindley sat next to him, with the telepath on his other side. As soon as introductions were over with Brindley nodded at Christov to begin. "Grand Crusader, by your hostility toward the authorized military forces of the legitimate Earth Government, you have in effect declared war against us, your own people. Your illegal actions crippled more than half a dozen Earth Force warships and destroyed the _Roanoke_ and _Agrippa_, killing over five thousand crew and Marines in total. You call yourself defenders, but what do you think you're defending? A group of men and women who willingly hijacked Earth Alliance property to hand it over to aliens on a silver platter, that's who! And now you allow them to sit here like you agree with everything they represent. Sheridan and his staff have shattered every oath and promise they have made, harbouring other traitors and terrorists like themselves. By binding yourselves to them you prove that you are as much traitors to humanity as they have been in the theft of _Babylon Five_."

Xavier made a show of yawning "Should we show you the evidence that your government ordered the Mars Colony to be bludgeoned into submission? How many domed cities did you bomb, Mr. Christov? Did you enjoy bathing your hands in the blood of innocents like your President Clark, who incidentally is under Shadow influence, does?"

"The military would never have done that! The Martian insurrectionists faked those broadcasts. You and that traitor Sheridan." Christov pointed at Sheridan "Are the only ones who did any true damage. Your lies are pointless, President Clark would never associate himself with alien influences."

Xavier smiled a little. After the Infinite War, practically any atrocities these people could pull were small potatoes to him "Oh, really? Miranda, bring up the recordings of the bombings, please." The holographic footage showed Starfuries leaving Earth Alliance ships in orbit to strafe and destroy a domed city while several others were levelled by orbital bombardment "By the way, President Clark has been meeting with Mr. Morden and his Shadow friends a bit too often as of late, but if you tell him I said that you're liable to be silenced by his Gestapo sooner than you think… and don't worry, the recording devices you're wearing have been neutralized as soon as you entered this ship."

"You are all blind servants of another Hitler wannabe, Earth Alliance is becoming a totalitarian state run on fear and hatred, and it is you who betrayed your oath to uphold the Constitution by obeying the orders of that murdering scum Clark." Susan piped up, suddenly realizing these Coalition people probably had no idea the Psi-Corps was involved in this whole fiasco. She stormed from the room, but was stopped just outside the door by Kasumi Goto.

"Excuse me, Commander, but you wouldn't be able to get anywhere on this ship without an escort. Do you need to use the bathroom? There's one attached to the conference room…"

"Sorry about the hysterics, but there's a telepath in that room with you, he's reading everything you guys are thinking, and by his frown it's nothing that Earth Alliance will like, meaning it's important. You have to get the Grand Crusader out of there."

Kasumi doubled over laughing before she changed the channel on her communicator to ship-wide "Grand Crusader? Could you please come outside for a moment? We have a problem."

Inside the conference room, as the Grand Crusader left, Brindley was hoping Ivanova had made a fool of herself, but from Miranda's little smirk and the gritted teeth of the telepath it might be a good thing for them to take a longer time in private talking since the man was obviously picking up something useful. How very wrong he was. In fact, Truman was unexpectedly running into the walls of the room and was confined to less than half the room by a barrier his mind didn't even see until it ran straight up against it. He was trying to wear his way through, but it seemed completely insurmountable. Perhaps this was some technology these Coalition people had? But then what was that even more impenetrable barrier around the Grand Crusader as he left? Unless… no, these people had telepaths, powerful ones… they would need to be shown the proper way, the way of the Psi-Corps, yes, that would be what needed to be done.

Outside in the hallway, Xavier frowned at Susan, but even before he could speak she started talking "You're being monitored by a telepath."

"You're sure?" He asked amusedly.

Susan blinked, thinking _They don't get it do they? Don't they have telepaths? Oh, right, if they really are from very far away, maybe telepaths haven't developed on their colony world yet…_

Unbeknownst to her, he was hearing everything she was thinking since she was doing it rather loudly. "Commander, I understand this may cause you some discomfort, but it's nothing you need to worry about. Their telepaths are practically irrelevant in the scheme of negotiations since they can't blow their cover during the negotiations."

Ivanova gaped at him briefly before sputtering "Grand Crusader, Psi-Corps by any measure is a dangerous organization that you will have to deal with as long as you are here. I don't know how you deal with your telepaths, if you have any, but they will try to strip you of anything you have on this ship that is of value. They were behind President Clark taking power to begin with!"

"It sounds like you don't get along with your telepaths." _Masterpiece of understatement_, he thought at the same time as Commander Ivanova, but for different reasons. "We have quite a few telepaths onboard, and we have technology to prevent use of telepathy if need be. Still, for your peace of mind and Captain Sheridan's, we will provide a suitable counterweight." He brought up his chest-projected hologram and tapped on Kelly's picture. Sutiable counterweight indeed, for Kelly was effectively a newbie at psychic ability use "Kelly, come down to starboard secondary conference room two please. It's time for you to get some live-fire practice on those skills you've been practicing."

He re-entered the conference room with Ivanova tailing him "Excuse me, we are waiting for another guest, please feel free to spew as much abuse as you'd like at us in the meantime, and forgive us if we don't bother paying attention." He was intentionally being as aggravating as possible while he mind-spoke to Miranda to _close the bubble a bit_.

_Aye sir._

_Have you also picked his mind clean of anything remotely useful while he's focused on trying to get through the barrier?_ Xavier questioned while Christov yelled at him, which he purposefully ignored.

_Yes, sir, this Psi-Corps is utterly disgusting and we should dismantle this malignant, vicious-cycle organization as soon as physically possible._ Miranda informed him.

Xavier decided to listen to Christov again, though still not appearing to do so while the man continued talking with "…You're not paying attention are you? Uh… Rainbows and unicorns! Well, seems they're paying attention again…" he muttered an addition: "I can't believe it worked…" While listening to Christov make a fool of himself, Xavier was thinking to Miranda_ Agreed from what I saw of Psi-Corps' actions and brainwashing doctrines._

Brindley wondered if his aide had finally lost it while Miranda questioned "What?"

The tall man shrugged "Hey, it got you two to look at us and pay attention again, didn't it?"

Brindley chuckled while Sheridan and Ivanova laughed "Only you, old friend, would actually go ahead with yelling something like that to get their attention back." _Good old Christov, does anything necessary to keep the ball rolling…_ Brindley thought.

* * *

A/N: Whereas a Sharlin looks like a 1600 metre long, 1900 metre tall angelfish, your typical Coalition capital ship (3872 series) looks like a flying brick with a terraced upper surface and truncated tapered front end. On the other hand, the Coalition (or at least a certain Legend) is fully aware of what the Rim is and what happens there, something which the Vorlons and Shadows will find immensely disappointing.

Take the Earth-Minbari War targeting problems that Earth had, multiply them by about five orders of magnitude, and you get the soon-to-be-seen (Ch 9) problem with targeting Coalition warships.

**Review responses!**

**Spacebar**: I was wholly unaware that the guns were dual-function. I just assumed that particle cannons and lasers were the secondary anti-ship batteries and that the particle cannons shared mounts/barrels with primary guns, because THEY are REALLY similar-mechanism to the main guns. Bracketing not needed for lasers, but yes for particle cannons and plasma/pulse cannons are practically useless unless at very close ranges (to quote you "jump in on your face and smash it in with a hammer!") i.e. less than a couple hundred kilometres. The Coalition can only exceed 100,000 km range with laser weapons against relatively stationary targets, other weapons work better against technologically inferior opponents or in mid-range (by B5 standards i.e. 1000-4000 km) or less slugfests.

**Nenfaer**: Thank you. Liara here will have a tendency of revealing or saying things as bait that are impossible to not bite on.

**KleverKilva**: Hmm, guess I should be more careful about attaching a person to each and every sentence even if it's a rapid fire interchange between two people …

REVIEW!


	8. The Hammer of Reality

A/N: My biggest grievance against AlbertG and his AUOC series would be the grammar. I shall endeavour to make fewer mistakes.

However, a large mistake was that even though almost all Aeon are to me psychic to one degree/specialization or another, I didn't use their powers in the past fics of this series. Thus, only logical conclusion would be that all sentient races have a few natural defence mechanisms against psychic intrusion and can at least detect it, and usually plain firepower is a lot more effective at getting shit done anyways. Hence, I concluded that the B5 races must have absolutely NO default defences whatsoever due to Vorlon/Shadow tampering.

* * *

Chapter 8: The Hammer of Reality

_CSC Surveyor, 105 km from B5, Local date April 18, 2260, Coalition date March 29, 3872_

The door opened behind the Earth crew and the average symmetry of the room's inhabitants went up a bit more with the addition of another Coalition person, the slender redhead in the same armour theme as the other two Coalition people but with even less bulk to her armour than Miranda sat on the other side of the table directly opposite the telepath. She quickly took in the information that Miranda and Xavier gave her as the latter told the Earth Alliance crew "Kelly Chambers is here because you are, Psi-Corps." The man gave a start at being called out so bluntly. In the meantime Xavier was telling Kelly that _These humans, hell this whole sector, have none of the natural barriers seen in all Milky Way races, nor do they have the genetic hard-wiring Forerunners and other post-Quantum Age humans do, it's like someone stripped them of all their natural defences. It was probably the Vorlons that did it, or maybe the Shadows, so that they would be vulnerable to telepathy. Therefore, I think you will be able to set him free from the Psi-Corps brainwashing he was subjected to with just brute force, even though you don't have much finesse yet. This will be a good practical application of the skills you've been working on, try not to break his mind too badly though, okay?_ He got an affirmative in reply.

"How dare you bring a telepath into these negotiations without our permission?" Christov accused, completely ignoring the fact that they'd done exactly the same thing.

"We let you on our ship in good faith and you brought a telepath without telling us. We simply assumed that it was your societal norm to do things this way." Xavier said cheekily. "And who ever said that this was a negotiation, Colonel Christov?"

The mind of the telepath the EA had brought was crushed into an ever-smaller volume around his own head as an invisible hand closed firmly around him _What are you?_ His mind screamed against the grab that was completely impenetrable, far firmer than even a P-12 could manage. His opponent did not deign to respond.

General Brindley frowned internally as he realized there were telepaths on this ship. Earth's telepaths had barely come into existence two hundred years ago and it was generally thought these people wouldn't have many, if at all, and certainly not on their ship. These people were an unknown and the number of alien species reported on their crew wearing their various armour designs touring _Babylon Five_ made his stomach knot with suspicion. So, he tried to be less confrontational since siccing Christov on them seemed to not be working so well. "Grand Crusader Fran, assuming you _are_ from some lost colony," later in life, when writing his memoirs, listening to that recording, Brindley would laugh hysterically at just how erroneous that assumption was, but right now he was certainly not amused in the least "and this isn't some… some hoax by Sheridan, surely you understand that we, the legitimate Earth Government, cannot have alien influence dictating our policies? Babylon Five is ours to do with as we see fit, for the benefit of all."

Xavier rolled his eyes dismissively "If you have interacted with aliens at all then by the fact that a foreign policy toward them exists, they will have influenced your policies. But I'm guessing your point is not about the semantics. What is your point exactly?"

"You should be helping us, not fighting against us in a battle you cannot win. The Earth Alliance has control over every star within twenty light-years of Earth and holdings out to two thousand light-years from Earth. Your so-called Coalition, if not a complete fake, would have a hard time fighting a new, determined, united Earth Government and the forces we can bring to bear. Your previous enemies would be a minor inconvenience compared to what we can do." The Coalition representatives looked slightly concerned, but not as much as Brindley would like. "You are simply minor representative involving yourselves in a major internal dispute. How can we communicate with your superiors? What would they say if we told them you involved yourselves with rebels against a legitimate government? You could be pirates or something for all we know."

In reality, Xavier, Kelly and Miranda were worried about how hard they'd need to stomp on these people get the point across that they were small potatoes. Coalition space today measured fifty thousand light-years across in the Milky Way's Galactic north-south and east-west directions, while nominally being two thousand light-years thick, extending outside the galactic disk by half its thickness in either direction. Yes, they didn't inhabit even half of the fully-habitable worlds they controlled, and they hadn't even bothered to terra-form any other than some of the worlds back in first wave of colonization, but their population density was hardly high in most places. Still, their population was above five trillion people and growing as much of the post-war generation wasn't as quick to slow down their reproductive cycle as had been hoped due to leftover impressions from their elders that every day could be their last.

Xavier snorted "It is true that we cannot communicate with the Coalition at the moment, but I have clearance from all four Major Factions' leaders to declare war should I see fit after a hostile first contact. If you really think we are pirates then you are vastly stupider than you look, and you already look like idiots. You just threatened war with us and now you're trying to be friends, hmm?"

Brindley glanced toward the B5 command crew "We aren't as bad as some of the press you've heard from… unreliable sources, Grand Crusader. There are alien predators out there who want to undermine the integrity of Earth and its territories. We're defending ourselves as best we can out here…"

Christov added his bit "That means if we need to make some sacrifices for the greater good, if we have to run over you to do it, we will. No aliens will be allowed to dictate our destinies if we can help it. Mankind is for Humanity, President Clark understands that."

"Your President is backed by some of these alien predators you speak of, he is a control freak who depends on the Psi-Corps and Shadows to back him up, and yet you still cannot see it, General and Colonel? I wonder if you were appointed on political merit, because it is grossly obvious to me. His dream of absolute control is an illusion, an illusion you are throwing away the lives of your citizens and soldiers to aim for, an illusion implanted in his face to blind him by the Shadows. No one can control their destiny completely, we can only steer it down a general course. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, which I believe still applies to you lot, dictates this to be truth. Even for us, there is randomness, the entropy of the universe at work, and that is what makes life worth living, the prospects of what unexpected surprises each new day will bring. I'm guessing that for you lot to legitimize our claim you want our full history?"

"Yes, complete information, and ideally an inspection of your ships." Brindley nodded quickly, absently. He was internally quite perturbed by the man's remarkably plausible claims. However the Psi-Corps member in the room would pick up on any doubtful thoughts of his… a glance told him the man was straining in his seat, trembling and sweating, while the cute redheaded woman across from him was looking up something for some reason on a laptop computer. _They still have those? Why?_ Brindley wondered.

_Because it's less of a pain in the neck than looking downward at the screen all the time, and keyboards are easier with both hands. And against the Mark One Eyeball, a solid back panel behind the hologram still effectively blocks it from your view._ The soft, feminine voice echoed in his head and he stiffened, leaning away from her almost instinctively. She was still working and hadn't even looked up… that meant she had to be very powerful.

Yeah, he had no idea whatsoever that Kelly, as far as Aeon were concerned, was still a fledgling in offensive Psionics. Nor did he know that any UEF or Cybran could hold off a mid-level Aeon psychic offensive indefinitely with no trouble whatsoever, and most Milky Way races at least could hold out for several minutes thanks to the Forerunners' considerations when repopulating the galaxy.

The Grand Crusader pretended to think, noting Sheridan and Ivanova's minds twitch in nervousness "Hmm… Kelly, get rid of the spy."

"Kill him?" The redhead pointed at the still-struggling telepath the Earth Force members had brought.

"Nah, just clean out all the shit Psi-Corps put in his head and put in something pleasant. Maybe adopt Mr. Christov's suggestion from earlier to start, rainbows and unicorns, was it?" Xavier glanced at the tense Earth Alliance group "Go ahead, Kelly."

"Yes, sir." The young woman said cheerfully before searching something in her computer, finding something, clapping her hands together gleefully, and looking up at the man shivering across from her, staring at her in wide-eyed terror with sweat dripping off his chin now.

"Please… please, no…" He whimpered as the pressure on his mind multiplied.

Kelly snorted "Don't worry, after this is done, your mind won't be poisoned by Psi-Corps anymore. It'll only hurt… a _little_ bit." The man jumped up and tried to run for it, trying to twist the door handle desperately before pounding his fists on it as the pressure on his head reached breaking point. "That's a sad effect of Psi-Corps indoctrination, they cling to it to the exclusion of everything else, and reject anything that could liberate them." Kelly told the horrified locals casually, then frowned and stared at him for almost half a minute, breathing deeply and quickly. The man stiffened and spasmed against the door before he finally slid down toward the ground and Kelly slumped a bit in her seat, taking a few slower deep breaths to wind down. Xavier caught the man as he collapsed and put him back in his seat.

"Harold?" Brindley asked, the timidity of his own voice surprising him as he shook the catatonic man a bit. "Harold, are you okay?"

The man flinched away from the contact, eyes glazed over and muttering "Ponies, Ponies, Everywhere…" then he shook himself and seemed to jerk awake "Oh, sorry, General Brindley, I'm alright… but for the record, I hereby quit the fucking Psi-Corps and would like to request asylum with the Coalition."

* * *

A/N: That's a reference to "Ponies Everywhere Graffiti" on DeviantArt by ShinodaGE. Did I mention my favourite line of Ch 7 was "Uh… Rainbows and unicorns!" by "Bulldozer" Christov?

* * *

Christov was first to say "What?"

"We can't give anyone asylum right now, but Babylon Five will probably welcome a P-10 telepath." Xavier told him.

Harold nodded "Captain Sheridan? Could I request asylum on B5? Is there any work for a telepath? If there isn't, could I get a job as a programmer? It's probably what I'm best at other than using my mind or trying to."

"Harold, what are you saying?" Brindley shook his head slowly, staring at his former aide.

"General, you're a good man, and you've been a lot nicer to me than most would be, but I know you don't like Psi-Corps either. They isolate us, selectively forced us to breed with each other like domesticated animals. It's time for this to end, General. Clark's just another Big Brother wannabe and the Psi-Corps are his thought police. Resistances are forming or have already formed, General, it's time to choose what's right, not what's easy. It's time to fight."

"You brainwashed him!" Christov pointed accusingly at Kelly.

Kelly shook her head and bullshitted something that was in fact a half-truth "No, anything the soul cries out in protest against is easy to remove, it was the only reason I was able to remove the taint of Psi-Corps with my limited skill level. I infused him with hope and a vision for the future, his own future built by his own choices, of his own volition, and for himself."

"She's right, I remember now that I never liked the pain in the ass subliminal bullshit they fed us every damned day during Psi-Corps training anyways. I tried to fake obedience, but eventually I succumbed. I owe you my life, Kelly Chambers, if there is anything you require of me at any point in the future, just ask." He turned away from her nod of understanding to stare defiantly past Brindley's resigned look to Christov's still-furious face "These words are some of what I remember of history class, some of when a dreamer name Martin Luther King Junior gave the downtrodden hope for the future in the late twentieth century, Colonel Christov, modified for me. _I am free! I am free! I am free at last!_" Then he stood and walked around Xavier to stand on the B5 side of the table, beside Kelly, smiling down at the chipper orange-haired young woman "Although I would have preferred it if you'd done it more quickly, because right now my hands hurt from clawing at that door. Still, it was well worth it."

"I don't think I can trust you." Susan growled at the man, eyeing Kelly suspiciously as well.

Truman shrugged "I don't know if I can trust myself… this freedom, this feeling… it's like being born again. Even the air smells different now."

"I think that's my perfume." Kelly deadpanned.

Harold opened his mouth, closed it, and then settled on saying "Oh."

Xavier did a deep scan of the guy's mind while Miranda did the same, and they uprooted a sleeper personality designed to, with a rather long pass phrase, return him to Psi-Corps control should he ever rebel. _Kelly, you missed the embedded sleeper personality inside him, but for someone of your current skill and power, I'm impressed with the remarkable job you have done._ He thought to her with a mental pat on the back.

By this point, Sheridan and Ivanova were staring warily at Kelly and both Brindley and Christov seemed noticeably cowed, glaring at her as if she was the foulest monster imaginable. Xavier had let them stew for a few minutes while he and Miranda had been doing the deep scan, but now he spoke "General, Colonel, your proposal is completely unacceptable to us, your government has no concern nor respect for the lives of its own people, and your President is a puppet of the Shadows even though he is egotistical enough to not see it. Our technology is not for sale… and we're not interested in taking over your little empire."

"You think this is over?" Christov snarled, but it was the snarl of prey making its last stand to Xavier, Miranda and Kelly, who could almost taste the fear rolling off him "You will never get home, wherever that is. You have defied the Government of a united Earth and have allied yourselves with traitors and aliens."

"Unless you wish to free-fall your way all the way down to your shuttle from here, I recommend you leave, thank you very much." Fran said conversationally, tapping some of the controls on his holographic interface. The conference room's thick window disappeared into nothingness in what seemed an instant "I'd say the drop is what, a hundred and sixty metres? Should be easy enough of a jump if you do it in controlled steps. Observe." He jumped from the window and everyone except Kelly and Miranda rushed over to the sill to watch him land ninja-like on the wing of a Gemini two levels (roughly 90 metres) down (second level from the ground), roll to the edge, grab it, swing a couple times to lose most of his momentum and then dropping himself to the ground between the prongs of yet another Gemini. He looked up at them from the floor of the hangar and waved, his voice coming over the PA. "General, Colonel, please take the elevator unless you want Kelly and Miranda to help you follow me. And no, that's not an offer to be carried down, that's an offer of defenestration. I doubt you have the skill, or the bone structure for that matter, to handle these falls." Even with the structural fields dampening their impacts, they'd probably still be at least badly injured.

The two men shared a look before numbly moving toward the door which Kelly had unlocked for them. Kasumi escorted them down the nearest vertical elevator—the one near the inside of the hangar deck near the inner wall—down to the hangar deck floor. Xavier awaited them at the bottom "I see you agreed to take the long way down." He commented as they set off toward the outer wall instead of taking a straight line to the Earth shuttle. Christov and Brindley numbly accepted this path even though they recognized it as even more, wholly _unnecessary_ intimidation as they now had to walk in front of several layers of wall made of malevolent-looking fighter craft, and, more importantly, spend more time with Kelly standing behind them. Neither man felt like turning their head around to look at her, and neither were aware that as far as Aeon were considered Kelly was still just learning the extent of her natural capacity and trying to get parts of it under control, being still quite young and new to this whole Psionic business. They did not speak again before they left. Sheridan and Ivanova were still a bit wary of Truman, but sending Kasumi with him as an escort to get him to B5 and into Garibaldi's custody for now was agreeable enough to all of them. The man climbed up the ladder into a Gemini after Kasumi ordered it to open up its chin ladder and _ran_ up it. It undocked from its anchorages, moved out into the open section of the bay, flew upward to the exit tunnels, then out through them in a matter of seconds. Sheridan and Ivanova noted morbidly that they didn't feel any atmospheric disturbance from the exit. _Perhaps a tractor beam?_ They thought, they were wrong.

Kelly, Miranda and Xavier now turned toward the B5 officers "Well, that went just as well as I'd hoped." The Grand Crusader said with a grin.

"Their behaviour is hardly a surprise. They want your ships, your technology, information on the Coalition to determine the threat level, even your telepaths, given that show of power back there."

"The Aeon crew members will never bow to any form of intimidation, besides, their attempts are laughably unimpressive anyway." Xavier kept grinning.

"But these Aeon, how many of them are there?" He looked at Kelly who blinked back innocently "I intend no offence, but I'd like to ask how the normal people get along with them. We haven't done so great in that respect over here in this sector of space yet."

"Every Coalition person is trained as part of compulsory education to shield themselves from psychic assault and, if they are psychic, to control their ability. Yes, the uniqueness of the Aeon threw us for a while" _Yes, twelve hundred years in fact. We hope to prevent you from making too many of the same mistakes we did, with your tech you would have a hard time recovering._ "But eventually we got used to it and we just treat each other as people. No matter what abilities each person has, they are still people."

"How many of the Aeon were telepathic?" Ivanova asked tensely, apparently having noticed Kelly's upper arm patch was topped with the same green factional symbol as Xavier and Miranda's.

Xavier chuckled "Excluding those who are Mind-Proof" They weren't just mind-blind, they were also basically completely impervious to psychic scans… "which is less than one in a million of the population of the Aeon Illuminate, all one point eight trillion of us are psychic to at least some degree." Sheridan gaped at the thought of a whole sector full of human telepaths and Ivanova had to be caught by Miranda before she could collapse. The Russian woman bolted upright and glared at the black-haired beauty warily. "Speaking of which, were you genetically modified to not have natural mental defences? You were broadcasting very loudly quite often up there… I kept myself from receiving too much of the background noise, but I could still tell the general noise levels and directions."

"We're just as human as the Cybrans and UEF citizens." Kelly said, frowning at Ivanova "And they too have significant proportions of their populations able to use their minds for assorted things. Over here you still think it's some sort of ability, instead of just another sense that's like sight or smell. Why would you fear telepaths just because you can't understand their extra sense? It's like a deaf person—not that we have those in the Coalition any more outside works of fiction—being terrified of everyone else because they couldn't understand you when you tried to describe sound to them."

"If you'd like, I'd like to show you the features of the Coalition Space Craft _Surveyor_ and some of what we have to offer you." Xavier said.

Sheridan's mind was numb already. If those four Major Factions were all on roughly equal footings and if these people wanted to overrun the sector, then it would be easy for them since they were bound to have many, many battleships like the one parked a few kilometres from the _Surveyor_. If they were going to do that, they would logically not even bother with this whole thing since they had enough resources to not worry about what few losses the locals would be able to inflict on them. Their incredible stealth systems meant no one would see them coming and they could destroy them with impunity. These people could well be far more dangerous than the Shadows, he thought morbidly, but making them leave was far from his choice given how many ships they could have stationed around Babylon Five already.

"We will be telling you some secrets, some things no one from this galaxy may know, on this tour, Captain Sheridan." He nodded mutely at Xavier's words "And in case you are wondering, we do have a few more ships surrounding this star system, although they are the extent of the Coalition Andromeda Command's forces at the moment." Susan stiffened a bit and determinedly refused to look at any of the telepaths surrounding them. "We are not here to threaten _Babylon Five_ or this sector, but to protect it."

"Protect it from who? Ourselves?" Ivanova snapped.

Xavier growled lowly before replying "If we need to step in to prevent you guys razing this whole sector to ashes that we would have to clean up, then yes, we will. With the exception of the Pak'ma'ra, we don't have any issues with any of the locals."

"Why the Pak'ma'ra, Grand Crusader?" Sheridan asked, although he had a feeling he knew why.

"Captain, Commander, consider what the Pak'ma'ra religion dictates they eat and what they will do to obtain food for themselves when their population grows too great. We have seen this pattern in the past among sentients that ate other sentients, the consequences are always extremely costly wars of annihilation that either end in them being exterminated at a high price or, in fiction, them prevailing and turning you all into livestock. As Liara told me before we came, from what she had foreseen of the Pak'ma'ra during her spiritual wanderings, you and I are only not-yet-dead carrion to them. The only reason I have not levelled the Pak'ma'ra worlds and hunted every single one of them down throughout this whole sector, and you know I can, is because there is still hope to change them and prevent us from having to strike pre-emptively. She was very clear on this, and I believe she is correct."

"That's probably the only sadly foolproof way of arguing it." Sheridan muttered almost to himself.

"Besides, she says you will understand better after the arrival of the Yonji Sinhindrea and their OCD consumptiveness."

"Who are the Yonji Sinhindrea?"

"You think the Shadows are the biggest monsters lurking out there in the dark? Think again, Captain, there is a much darker storm coming, and it is one of the main reasons we are here to help you in whatever capacity you are willing to accept."

Sheridan sighed deeply "I believe you, Grand Crusader, I believe you, because there is no reason you would be doing this otherwise. With your technology, this whole sector would fall within a couple months if not weeks." Xavier's thoughts on this were _Try hours if we actually tried._ "Very well, if there is darkness coming, then we shall face it, and we will be very thankful for your aid. Lead the way, please."

More than an hour later, they ended up in the primary hologram deck. Sheridan and Ivanova looked almost as stumped at the plain speckled grey walls as they had when listening to Xavier covering the basics of quantum travel i.e. editing the coordinate set of all the subatomic particles of an object relative to the universe. "It has come time for you to see the truth." Xavier said ominously as he brought up a hologram of a barred spiral galaxy in space , the rest of the room going dark with more galaxies glittering in the background. Colours appeared over parts of the galaxy shown "This is the Coalition and its neighbours in the Milky Way Galaxy. The blinking star is the Sol System."

Sheridan gaped at the size and volume of Coalition space and the size of its neighbours "You're not from a colony are you? Are you from our future then? And which colour is the Coalition specifically?" He tried to walk but it was if gravity had disappeared, so he had to try to wim over in the air.

"Red, Blue, Green and Yellow, these four colours, are our major factions, and this teal is a minor faction." He gestured at practically a whole quadrant of the galaxy picture and the B5 pair's jaws dropped a bit more "Coalition space is vast, but the Milky Way we come from is only one hundred thousand light-years across. Your galaxy is two hundred thousand light-years across. Can you hypothesize why that is?"

"Alternate universe?" Sheridan asked, hoping he wouldn't be finding himself in one of those sci-fi books or movies he'd liked in his youth. If he was, then he hoped he was at least in a nice one where the good guys prevailed in the end with few losses to the core cast and ideally no broken hearts.

"No, Commander T'Soni came onboard earlier while we were touring the engine rooms. She is the only one who knows everything that had transpired to make things this way. According to predictions, our two galaxies will collide in about four and a half billion years, assuming your Sol system was engineered as a sufficiently good copy of ours."

"What are you talking about? And are you saying you're from the Andromeda Galaxy"

Commander T'Soni's pale skin and green hair emerged from the darkness as she entered the hologram room, walking quietly on her white sock/stocking-clad feet. "There are forces at work here which are far beyond even the Vorlons and Shadows, Commander Sheridan. When an automated Forerunner construction ship carrying their DNA and primitive human DNA—"

"So _that's_ why we'd only ever found eight wrecks out of the 'nine ships to mortal men doomed to die' your pre-incarnation spouted at us!" Miranda exclaimed.

Liara continued as if she hadn't been interrupted "—was sent into deep Slipspace on an outbound trajectory hoping to establish a population in the Andromeda Galaxy as we call this place. I am aware you have an Andromeda Galaxy too, that is the galaxy we call the Milky Way, so let us use the Coalition convention of the Milky Way being the smaller, denser barred spiral galaxy and Andromeda being the larger, flatter one that we are in right now, okay?" Sheridan and Ivanova nodded mutely "It was moments before the firing of the Halos, but they were still caught within range of the blasts and the whole crew died. The AI responsible decided to find a system similar to Earth's. Surprisingly it managed to find one and, after some engineering… Venus spins in the same direction as the other planets for you, correct?"

Sheridan nodded "Yes."

"Well as you can see the constructor ship had some constraints, where we come from our Venus has a very slow retrograde rotation. I know what the Vorlon said to Natasha Alexander, Lyta's grandmother, when they met on your on Venus in 2189, your time, and modified her to be a tool of the Vorlons. He said 'evolution crawls to imperfection', and I will demonstrate to him precisely how true that is by opening him up like a tin can when it comes time." She snarled the last part "And it will come, I know this. Anyhow, the constructor ship did as best it could for sixty thousand years before it was found and crippled by the Vorlons. They boarded and decided the Slipspace drive it had was too dangerous for the young races as its capacity was too great. This actually led to them building the Jump gate network and firing up their storm generators to keep this area of Slipspace, Hyperspace for you, dangerous and unpredictable."

Commander T'Soni was pacing slowly in front of a stunned Sheridan and Ivanova by now, staring straight ahead, seemingly unseeing. "The control freaks have used you for a long, long time. They had sent a probe toward our Earth shortly after finding that constructor forty thousand years ago, and decided that their pet project in the time between Shadow Wars would be to see what you guys did if they emulated Earth's history to its information age on your planet using cloning, telepathic force, and other factors. It was their idea of an ant farm or, in Vorlon terms, pebble collection. Now it is time for the mountain to crumble because the pebbles, you, dare to present yourselves as tripping blocks to this age-long game of 'who's right' between the Shadows and Vorlons. The Shadows believe chaos and conflict bring strength, while the Vorlons believe in order and absolute control. Initially, neither side was like they are now and they safeguarded the younger races as they evolved after many older races than they had left for the Rim."

She caught Sheridan's raised eyebrow "I know, and it is for Kosh and his people to know, what the Rim is. You will find out when he deigns to tell you or when you all survive this conflict and I tell you. However, back on track now. It only takes knowledge of the other group's existence for two groups to take measures to differentiate themselves, niche separation, you know. This happened to the Shadows and Vorlons and they began to disagree. Eventually it came to blows and soon the younger races began one by one being recruited for use as pawns."

She caught the furious look on Sheridan's face "Do not blame Kosh, he is very well-respected among the Vorlons, but he feels that they have lost their way and was sent here because the Vorlon Empire believed you younglings did not matter. It was a way of exiling him while still appearing respectful of his age and experience, but he is one of the few Vorlons who genuinely cares for the younger races, Sheridan, and one of the even fewer Vorlons I am not currently inclined to tear into. He is one of the few who, to use the translated wording of the Vorlons' Great Enemy, the Yonji Sinhindrea, I would not classify as Vorlon-Stain."

"Who are the Yonji Sinhindrea? The Coalition has mentioned them several times." Sheridan asked. "I thought he Shadows were the Vorlons' Great Enemy?"

"I will tell you the history of the Yonji when they appear, but know that they will be the unifying force for the Vorlons and Shadows to cooperate with one another after we begin the process by ourselves drawing their ire and forcing both races to linger in this sector long enough that the Yonji become relevant. When two opposing factions are brought to any sort of peace conference, they will still butt heads just for the sake of being different from each other, but given a common enemy, they will unite. The young races should have them around as mentors to see what racial senility brings, while the Vorlons and Shadows are sure to contain enough individuals interested in seeing new things, or who can be brought around to such, that they will be able to remain as viable species. They have the potential to be like the great-grandparents that the kids occasionally visit, who can look at the children's achievements and be simply proud of them. I will do my best to bring out that potential from within them. With the power of the Coalition behind me, it shouldn't be a problem. Yes, there's some pretty horrible shit out there, but united in several competitive but friendly factions, this sector should have no problems overcoming them."

There was silence for a few moments before Commander T'Soni smiled and added "I am fully aware that I sound like a funny cinematic speech from a video game, any questions?"

"How can you be sure our Earth is the fake and not yours? And how do you know it was our history that copied yours?"

"Because of the Forerunner Installations and Monitors in our galaxy. As for the history, the Coalition date is in 3872, the Vorlons only gathered information up to our year 2005 or so, and they synchronized history up until then, then let the ant farm run free because their probe had stopped working and subsequent probe attempts were detected and destroyed by us."

Sheridan hummed in what he thought was understanding "You have over sixteen hundred years on us, no wonder you're so advanced…"

Commander T'Soni shook her head "Oh, the Vorlons and Shadows have millions of years on us. It's not a matter of time, it's attitude. They're too busy holding the younger races down just like the Confucian philosophies of ancient China—which I'm sure our histories share—which were too busy stifling the peasants to promote any progress. Whenever some scientific discovery comes about, it's always hurriedly used in some deception of the peasants instead of systematically applied to improve their strength as a nation or in this case your strength as a sector."

"So how was your history from after 2005?" Sheridan asked.

The Legendary Commander looked at her colleague "Grand Crusader, you tell them."

Xavier nodded "Violent, very violent, aggressive programs for space exploration began before 2010. Quantum Technology experiments were conducted often in the late twenty-first century, but the takeover by the United Earth Directorate meant subspace technology took over the mainstream for a while in the twenty-second century. After the UED's fall and the rise of the Earth Empire, humanity had several major waves of colonization outward using warp drives and later Quantum technology, which was discovered to be much faster than warp and more reliable. From the very beginning those colonists were genetically assembled and highly modified. Other than the few the UED sent off that ended up in the Koprulu Sector as we call it, every human in our galaxy has Quantum Age upgrades. Our bones are very hard to break, we are much stronger than you are, we can tolerate greater stresses, our metabolisms can shift gears to adapt to different temperatures, and we do not observably age, among other things. I am over two hundred and ten years old now, and served the Aeon Illuminate for the last one hundred and fifty years of the Infinite War. The war ended in 3844, in Miranda's teen years and Kelly's childhood, but the Seraphim War that followed was no less devastating. However, the Seraphim Separatists joined us in the Coalition and we threw back the forces of the Imperium."

Ivanova gaped for a bit before asking timidly "How long was this Infinite War?" _More than one hundred and fifty and from the way he said it likely over three hundred years of war… wow…_

"Very long, Commander, very damned long." Commander T'Soni said darkly. "Perhaps we should get back to the station now, we'll tell you before we tell anyone else, we promise that, but not right now… We do however pledge our continued support to _Babylon Five_ as long as the political and diplomatic situation in this region should remain unstable."

Sheridan and Ivanova shared a look. If these people could send ships to explore on an intergalactic scale, then they couldn't do much against them anyways. Getting that guarantee was probably as good as they could possibly hope to get. They needed time to digest this steaming pile of crap—er, information—that had buried the fan… "Hold on, what if some telepath scans us and takes this information from our heads?"

"How high do you think are the chances of someone believing something which seems so ridiculous to their shallow minds?" Commander T'Soni asked back "Implausibility is your best shield. Also, the local humans are not going to believe the claim and think we lied to you about all this history, I guarantee this, simply because it no longer makes your Earth the Homeworld of Humanity. Mankind is self-centered enough of a species that you still have Creationists who believe all aliens are the spawn of Satan. Think about that, Captain."

"Thank you for the clarifications, Commander, and may I ask another thing?" He looked up at the green-haired woman with the gown, two big red gems, odd ears and odd spikes under her ears "What are _you_? Is your species in the Coalition too? And how do you know all this?"

"My homeworld is in Coalition territory, it is an Earth-like planet that we called Earth II. If I'm not wrong, then video games should exist on your planet or in its history and links somewhere on the Internet should contain some, though distorted and often inaccurate, information. These and their remakes were mostly published in the early twenty-first century, although the anime began a bit earlier. The games reflect a more accurate take on the events during what the locals called the Age of Heroines, assuming you choose the female player characters, while the anime reflects a Japanese traditionalist idea. In that line of bullshit, er, I mean thought, a single boy had either taken the place of or somehow displaced all those heroines. It shouldn't be hard to figure out from there, but as a final hint I'll tell you that most of the native species enjoyed fighting gladiatorial matches. I know all this because I spent some time wandering about as a spirit without a body and remember that time."

"Are you a telepath too?" Susan asked Liara as they left the hologram room. "And were _you_ ever forced to fight as a gladiator?"

Liara scowled "All of my species are psychics, and no I was never _forced_ to fight as a gladiator, fighting to survive on the other hand, sometimes I was forced into those situations. Fighting in the sanctioned matches was just a means to become stronger and with humans supervising and rules in place we didn't keep attacking after the opponent passes out, as may happen in the wild. As a result most individuals of any the native species would take pleasure from battling as opposed to hunting or being hunted, unless it involved being repeatedly sent out against much stronger or much weaker opponents, in which case we usually get a bit pissed off. Also, the humans had machines and technology to restore us to health far faster than we could heal on our own, so we could gain strength much faster with them than in the wild. We were using them as much as they were using us."

"Sorry." Susan said, leaning back subconsciously from the woman's intimidating tone.

"It's okay." They were quiet the rest of the way to the B5 shuttle, and the B5 shttle left soon thereafter. The green-haired woman turned to the orange-haired woman next to her "Is this news I heard in the note Xavier sent about you re-washing a local telepath's brain successfully all true?"

Kelly answered the vastly more powerful and experienced psychic hesitantly "Erm, yes? From what I could see in his mind, Psi-Corps is just…" She shuddered "The only word I can think of that doesn't involve too much cursing is that it's pure, refined _evil_."

She clapped Kelly about the shoulder "That's the spirit Kelly, beat the representatives of evil powers completely into the dirt…" Then she whispered as if to herself with a small smile "…like the Togekiss I knew."

"What's a Toga-what?" The young orange-haired woman asked.

"Don't worry about your pre-incarnations too much, Kelly, you'll get a headache from it, just know that you used to terrify Grunt and later even Thane into submission on a regular basis."

Annoyingly, badgering her for information yielded no results.

* * *

A/N: **Yes, I dropped the bomb on how the B5 humans came to be. There is still the Minbari, Centauri, Vorlons, Reapers and Yonji Sinhindrea to cover. Don't worry, we have a lot of shit to deal with yet!**

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**Spacebar**: I have decided, Particle and plasma barrels are shared, Lasers get their own. For story purposes, let's say the particle cannons are projected at least at one percent light speed since the massive coils used to fire the pulses are powerful enough to accelerate that much plasma in that short a barrel length to any reasonable speed, so the particle beam should be accelerated quite well too. To make things clear, I never watched B5, at all. My first interest in that universe was from reading AlbertG's work. As for Londo, words will be had as IMHO he is quite simply a good person who needs a bit of help to save him. As for Star Wars, it seems we think alike. I'm presuming you are thinking as I am of the unstable Hyperspace in B5 and in the "Unknown Regions"? (In my mind there is no excuse whatsoever to leave 10% of the galaxy unexplored! Mass shadows make Hyperspace difficult, SO WHAT? Just go slower in hyperspace and pop out every few light-years to do a scan, they could chart it within a few years but they don't, why? Because they are certified morons!) HOWEVER the more I look at the SW galaxy the more I think I don't want to ever cross it in because the Coalition would probably take a closed-door approach to them because they're "a lost cause". A closed door does not make for a good story…

**Contessa Omega**: Agreed! Let us hope so! Though this chap is a little longer than I'd hoped due to the big reveal. Sorry. Still under 8K though :D

REVIEW!


	9. Conversation, Ambassadorial or Otherwise

A/N: I have concluded that Quantium-40 and Element Zero are two closely related substances, perhaps isomeric forms? We shall see… we shall see…

And Xavier , if he is made aware that the pak'ma'ra don't spell their species name in English with an initial capital letter, will likely answer "Do I look like I care? Grammar rules do not translate across languages often enough for it to be relevant."

**If more reviews had come, I would have posted this chapter sooner. I now demand an average of over 3 reviews per chapter before updating (note: promptness not guaranteed as it sometimes still needs to be written)**, i.e. 25 to earn this one, 28 to earn Ch 10, 31 to earn Ch 11, etc. I have already written a lot more than is posted for this fic, but I demand more feedback to help me decide how to move further and what plot holes need patching. **Spacebar and Nenfaer are excellent examples of model reviewers. KleverKilva is also quite nice, along with other names I won't list here because you want to read the story NOW.**

* * *

Chapter 9: Conversation, Ambassadorial or Otherwise

_Earth Alliance Shuttle, En route from_ CSC Surveyor _to B5 Jump gate, Local date April 18, 2260, Coalition date March 29, 3872_

Both Earth Force officers sat numbly in their seats as their shuttle moved away from the Coalition behemoths. They'd seen just about nothing of the internal workings of the ship other than that it had extremely spacious hangar bays, a very good and gravity-controlled elevator system, at least three women and one man—all of whom were far too idealized in appearance to be fully human—and a hell of a lot of scary things inside it. Just the hangar bay size and the fighters had made Brindley think that current EA warships had far too few fighters and anti-fighter weapons. And to think that the tunnel into the hangar bay went through a hull that could still support so many weapon turrets—including a few he could have sworn were old-fashioned twentieth-century battleship triple turrets—on the outside, they must have had a LOT of power conduit capability and reactors to power so many turrets, even if only for an alpha strike. Given the ship was shaped more or less like a flying brick, manoeuvring should also require a hell of a lot of power given the mass of the ship compared to a more skeletal design.

"That went well, eh?" Brindley was rubbing his temples at the headache he'd gotten and wondering if it was caused by that crazy telepath Kelly Chambers that they were apparently letting run rampant on their ship. _Scratch that, of course it's her, even if she didn't do anything to us directly, having us tense like that for so long trying to make sure our minds were still ours would be enough to give me a headache._ "We should have realized it with that welcome woman's attitude staring us in the face." He knew he should be angrier, but right now he was just relieved to be away from that ship and those… _things_. He couldn't call them humans, they were too aesthetically idealized to be people and it unnerved him deeply. He could imagine what some people's reactions would be, they'd probably turn into drooling, lust-driven idiots even without the telepathic mind-frying these people could do.

"I was following standard procedure." Christov said glumly, also clearly torn between being furious and being relieved. "Intimidation is usually supposed to work, the Alpha Male Syndrome so to speak… we should have realized they were already alphas on a whole different level from ours. Because of that, I wouldn't be surprised if they were like the Centauri and those women were that man's harem…" He sighed and shook his head ruefully "They are supremely confident in their abilities."

"Overconfidence will be their undoing. President Clark has asked the other governments to back off. Dealing with those ships will be an internal Earth Alliance affair. The Centauri might give us a bit of trouble though. They want the technology in those ships badly and will probably resort to using force of arms to obtain it."

"Why don't we let them try? That larger battleship broke eight Omegas on its own practically without trying. We can let them grind a bunch of Centauri ships to scrap and then jump in to finish the job."

Brindley rolled his eyes "You saw the readings, Colonel."

"Exactly, we were registering shield power drop even though we were only hitting them with full volleys of laser and some particle cannon fire. If we can achieve contact with the pulse cannons in our alpha strikes we will be able to easily blast through their shields and cripple them, especially if the Centauri have already weakened them for us." Technically they _would_ be able to get the shields down if they got every single pulse cannon blast in the combined alpha strikes of many warships to hit, but Christov didn't know that the damage readings were basically logarithmic to weapons yield against weapons in the megatons and above range, so no crippling would not occur. He had made the mistake of assuming that shield/field damage taken factored linearly with weapons yield, which was very much not the case.

"That's precisely my point, if the Centauri pull a similar move and get those ships first? They're already volatile and trying to fight all their neighbours at once. With that tech boost, they'll be even worse and we wouldn't be able to withstand them. I don't imagine the other races will be pleased either at them getting the tech. Even the Minbari aren't sure what to do about this Coalition arriving in this sector. It all depends on Delenn, but our sources say her position isn't as strong as she wants us to think."

The two men sat in silence for a bit before Christov spoke again "Do you think Harold was faking it to try to get in among them?"

"It's possible, but I doubt it. I think they really did convert him just like that. The implications, well, we both know how large they are."

They sat in more silence, contemplating what they'd seen and heard of. The Coalition fighter craft had been said to be alive to some extent by the captured Earth Force personnel, reacting to their proximity. There was also the matter transit system they must somehow have possessed to have gotten all those crew off the ships before they blew them up, excluding the _Roanoke_ and _Agrippa_, that is. The abominable energy shield was extremely powerful to have withstood over a minute of sustained laser and particle cannon bombardment from six Omegas, even if only half the particle cannon shots hit them by firing to bracket with their abominably high manoeuvrability. And the focusing of their lasers! Examination of the sensor records from the surviving black boxes of the two destroyed ships said that the lasers were continuous beam microwaves at ten kilotons per second each, with a diameter of only _two metres_!

If the organization called the Coalition of Species existed, Brindley had no doubt a small fleet of their battleships could cut through Earth's defences unless the Earth Alliance could gain a better understanding of them. The Vorlons, Minbari, Centauri and these Shadows the Coalition spoke of would all be irrelevant if the Earth Alliance was crushed by the Coalition. As a Minbari War veteran, Brindley shared Clark's fear of alien domination, especially as they were surrounded by powerful, dangerous neighbours. Mankind needed to grow and expand on its own terms, ideally peacefully, and to do so it had to stand united against the dangers lurking in the darkness.

That brought him to the next question. Was Clark relying on the backing of the Shadows and their other servants? The Coalition people had insisted he was, but Brindley was inclined to take their word with a mountain of salt. Still, if they had wanted to plant a lie and turn him into a dissenter, they could have modified his mind during the meeting and he might not even have realized it. On the other hand, maybe the fact that his mind still seemed his own was just a ploy by them to make him think they were telling the truth. Brindley came to the conclusion that overanalyzing this was pointless without more evidence, but thus far he wasn't inclined to trust the separatists.

He voiced his opinion on the matter to Christov "We can't allow them to divide us into squabbling factions, Clarke was correct, no matter the breaking of eggs, we need to show a strong front now. The Coalition warships are a perfect demonstration of what sort of threats we'll face in the future. We should have held onto the lesson the Minbari taught us, but we forgot and let them dictate terms to us with building _Babylon Five_ in the first place. Delenn has a hold over Sheridan and through him and other turncoats they try to influence us. That has to stop now, the full blockade needs to be put into place, nothing comes in or out of B5 space."

* * *

A/N: Corrected a couple math errors, one each on Ch 3 and 5 with regards to the power levels involved in the weapons and the amount of iron they can vaporize.

* * *

_Zocalo, Babylon Five, Local date April 19, 2260, Coalition date March 30, 3872_

"Good day, First Citizen." G'Kar was actually almost surprised at being greeted randomly in the Zocalo by the green-haired, funny-eared Coalition ambassador to the station, given he hadn't had a chance to meet the woman and talk yet. Things had been busy the past few days, including keeping the underground railroad open with Vir Cotto. Yes, he didn't like Centauri in general, but Vir was overall a decent person and wanted to help the Narns, so G'Kar had a functional, though secret, professional relationship with him. Londo Mollari on the other hand… well, he at least realized the Centauri were being barbarians, but the way he behaved irked G'Kar quite a bit more than the latter would like.

"Hello, Ambassador, what can I do for you?" He said, pausing his morning walk to turn and look at the woman.

"I'd like to ask if you have a moment of your time to spare right now. There are many things we must speak about, many things involving your people and rivalry with the Centauri." That had his focus completely riveted to her as he discreetly glanced around for eavesdroppers while she gazed steadfastly at him "I'd like you to come speak to me in my assigned quarters at noon today, is that suitable for you?"

G'Kar nodded fervently despite knowing there would be a lot of strings attached. She had spoken in terms that any self-respecting Narn could not possibly refuse outright, after all "Yes, certainly, I would be happy to meet with you at that time, Am—" She raised a delicate green eyebrow at him "Liaison." It wasn't like he had another appointment today in that general period of time.

"Thank you for agreeing to meet with me." The green-haired woman nodded and her hair moved with her head almost how a Centauri hair fixture would move, G'Kar noted. He wondered how much hairspray she put in it. He would not have been pleased to learn that Londo had wondered the same thing at one point during their first meeting.

* * *

_Two minutes later, same general area of B5…_

"Ambassador." Commander T'Soni said to Londo, striding up from behind him.

"Liaison, to what do I owe the pleasure of this conversation?" Londo turned and asked, he had just seen the woman talk to G'Kar out of the corner of his eye and decided to leave, but she had seemingly followed him around a corner.

"A certain… associate of someone who you bluffed against several days ago." Londo merely raised an eyebrow even though she could sense the shock radiating off him at the revelation of his bluff. Her subconscious snorted _Oh please, as a Psychic-type, and with the Egg-group-based psionic genomic analysis, simulation and selective recombination that my planet's wildlife uses to mate successfully with other strains similar enough to be in our egg group, it's easy to analyze what's toxic to what. Even though most of our so-called poisons work on a bio-electric-field-based basis there are or rather were still enough direct ones that I can run a simulation, and being a psychic-type scanning your tea was enough to tell… That's not even minding the fact that I looked through your strangely defenceless mind._ "his masters are telepathic. They know of _her_. Come with me if you wish to understand more." Londo Mollari would probably have trailed dumbly after the woman even if he hadn't been free for the morning; he knew this, and he knew that she knew this. But… Morden's associates were telepaths?

Once they were in the Liaison's "quarters", which consisted of an office with a desk and several chairs, she shut the door and began explaining "They are what you call Shadows." _Ah, that explains it._ "They will have a subordinate of Morden's poison Adira when she tries to come back to you, back to Babylon Five. They will frame Lord Refa for it, playing on your hatred of him and using it to their advantage so that you will reaffirm your own ties to them. This will not turn out well for you. However, I will avert this crisis for you to an extent, provided you agree to cooperate."

Londo stared at the woman, frowning "With the plan you outlined, it sounds like YOU might be poisoning her instead and are just holding her over me as a hostage."

Commander T'Soni shook her head sharply and Londo absently wondered, once again, about asking what hairspray she used to make it move as if it was an extension of her skull even she was moving so sharply. If it wasn't smothering or heavy, he could make some decent money selling the new and improved product on Centauri Prime with all the hassle long hair usually represented "Saving her was never in doubt. The question was what would come after. If you cooperate with us, we will keep her safe and you can spend time with her at your leisure, but you have to pretend to grieve over the fake death we will plant. In our current plans, the Shadows cannot realize so early that we are here to teach them a lesson about fucking with the younger races like this. We want them to learn, but learn painfully."

"From what you have told me, it seems we both have a common objective at this time, hurting the Shadows." Londo pointed out the obvious dryly.

"I am aware you are trying to save your people from what you see as barbarism, and I respect you deeply for being a good man and a patriot, so much so that you would have decided to threaten Refa even if you knew you were consigning the love of your life to death. You're a good man and deserve better than that. We can help you bring your people out of the woods. Turhan's widow wasn't wrong, if you let us kill Morden instead of eventually killing him, with his already-dead humanity, and manage to enlighten the Centauri people, saving the collective eye which does not see that your race is in the jungle, you can be saved. We can't help you directly, but we can do our best by giving the Centauri Republic a good spanking when they try to attack us for our technology. You need only allow the more arrogant, barbaric ones to attack us, but do put up a little bit of token protest if you must to not seem out of character. We will destroy them, and then you will be able to rally the people and the rest of the military under the banner of accepting the offer of peace we extend."

"How do you know all this? And how would you help? You only have two ships here."

"We have many more than that, Londo, undetectable to your sensors. We don't want to hurt your people too much, just enough to turn them away from the path of pointless aggression they are on at the moment. We are not a very expansionist power, perhaps ideologically and socio-economically, but not territorially. We are interested in helping others achieve peace and prosperity. At the moment, it is important to the future of this sector that the Centauri calm down and, as you would probably say, start acting like one of the older young races."

"Are you a prophetess?" Londo asked after a moment of silent contemplation, wondering if that was the answer to his question of how she knew all this.

"I have seen the past, present, and many futures as a wandering, disembodied spirit browsing through time and space. My species already have our own sight of possible futures, although it's hard to figure out if they are dreams or actual visions. Unlike your prophetesses, however, I don't speak in riddles. There is a long, dark path ahead of you, we can help you make it brighter for the Centauri race. Will you allow us to help you?"

"You aren't giving me much choice are you? But all these promises… you almost remind me of Mr. Morden in a way. However, I do believe you, at least for now. If the Court decides to move against you, I will not bar it too much." _If they truly have enough strength to teach my kind a decent lesson, they could have done so without telling me. However, this feels almost like how the Shadows would operate. Still, something tells me these Coalition people will only be good for the Centauri… no, I cannot think this way, it could be some sort of telepathic influence._

"Good, that is all I can ask of you. We will do what we came here to do, teach some of the locals some much-needed lessons in tolerating one another and the powers of unity and humility. The most important students are going to be the old races who are using the young ones as pawns. It is like the wars of the past, the young are expended for the mad dreams of sick old bastards pulling the strings behind the scenes. It is time for civilization to at least begin to ascend beyond that cycle." Something told him the current powers that be in this sector wouldn't like that prospect. As for himself? He didn't mind the idea of giving the Shadows and Vorlons a spanking in the least, and that scared him since they were both old, powerful races. If the Coalition could deal with both of them at once and not be stressed about it… then either they were extremely overconfident and foolish or there really wasn't much of a point toying with the younger races if they wanted to conquer this area. They had to have some sort of motive, he was sure, but… would she answer if he asked?

"Why are you doing this?"

"The Coalition loves to have friendly competitors. Such competitors can push each other to new heights of technological development and progress. It's like competition between siblings. The Citadel Council does better than the Coalition in most forms of mid-scale technology like hovering camera drones." Quantum reactor cores and even energy receivers were annoyingly large in volume of frame (i.e. person-sized) if not internal volume, and only rarely were Ambient Energy Harvesters (for nanites) feasible due to their comparatively massive sensor signatures if not masked by a structural field, which most often could only be fitted on things with reactors anyways. So Citadel tech was better for small combat or civilian units, but not for raw nano-technological or macro-technological power. Londo, if it was physically possible, seemed to perk up even more trying to listen for information of the neighbours of the Coalition.

"The Covenant have us vastly beat in sheer size of engineering in the case of their largest capital ships, as well as yield of broadside. We trash everyone else from our region of space in durability and more importantly mass production." She continued past the very literal statement without alerting Londo to it "Having many different technological threads is fascinating and good for the health of all civilization as variation is in and of itself adaptive. Learning from each other yielded great improvements to all of us. Many years ago, the factions uniting to form the Coalition resulted in a great number of technological leaps forward for all of us when they combined their knowledge and many technologies. I hope, and the leaders of the Coalition hope, that this sector can share the sort of success unity brought us and become a worthy friendly competitor."

"Keep attention outward so things don't splinter at home?" Londo questioned, getting the hint that she wasn't going to say more about the Covenant or Citadel even if he asked.

"Yes."

"Well, it's a much better way of doing it than what my people are doing now. What you explained are the philosophies of the Vorlons and Shadows also fit observed patterns. Very well, I will work with you."

Commander T'Soni nodded, then turned away to pull a bottle from her bag, pouring a small cupful for Londo, who tilted his head inquisitively at the mouthful he'd been given, and a full glass for herself "As an early twenty-first century band on Earth said in a song they re-did from a late twentieth-century band, 'this is the time, this is the place, so we look for the future'… let us drink to it." She caught his look, and explained "Leppa Berry juice tends to supercharge people able to fully metabolize it if they have nothing better to channel the energy into. Those able to partly metabolize it and unlock its energy storages either recharge their power reserves to one extent or another or feel the need to vent some extra psychic energy. However, your physiology will only have this serve as a energy drink to wash away the stress in you. As for my musical tastes, well, wandering through time and realities wondering when you'll get to take over the body of the soul you were replicated from tends to make you kill time on a number of sometimes frivolous things."

Londo smiled a bit, although inwardly he was under the impression that he was facing what was in mind if not in body essentially close to a First One. "I think you heard me the first time saying it to Lord Refa, but I'll say it again, you are the most interesting person I've ever had the pleasure to interact with. I have a feeling I wouldn't understand your last statement anytime soon without hurting my brain, so… To the future!" They knocked back their drinks and Londo could feel it taking effect within mere seconds, his limbs growing lighter, aches fading from his muscles, and his senses gradually becoming somewhat sharper. "Wow, you could make a fortune with this drink! Although the name sounds like a misspelled version of 'apple'."

"Thank you for the compliment, it evolved from apples on my homeworld. We have a small orchard aboard the _Surveyor_ dedicated to growing plants from my home." Commander T'Soni replied. They spoke a bit more before they parted ways.

She smiled. Londo wouldn't try searching the Internet for the term "Leppa Berry" now, which was nice. She didn't need a horde of gamer nerds foaming at the mouth and chasing her around the station if it got out.

* * *

When she met with G'Kar, she started with "I am glad to see you came."

"The pleasure is mine, Liaison." G'Kar stated sincerely.

Commander T'Soni offered him some water, which he accepted, saying "You have caused quite a bit of excitement around here. The Earth Government still wish even after your spectacular refusal to examine your ship in detail. I don't think they quite get the point yet."

"People often close their eyes to that which they do not wish to see." Liara said with a smile.

G'Kar nodded and sighed "My people are still having a hard time with that concept."

"You suffer greatly for your people, but they barely realize it…" _Not unlike Ambassador Mollari_, she thought. He opened his mouth and she held up a hand "First Citizen, before you even ask, I can tell you that we will not extend military aid to you against the Centauri at this time. However, as soon as the Centauri attack us for our technology, as you know they will, First Citizen, we will give them a hammering they will not forget. And no, we will not repeat or allow anyone to repeat against Centauri Prime the mistake the Centauri perpetrated against Narn under their mad emperor's orders."

"I would never ask something like that, not even against the Centauri." G'Kar hissed.

"And many Narns disrespect you for that." She noted calmly.

"You are very wise, Liaison, may I ask a personal question?" She nodded to his question "What was your colony world like? Was it much like Earth?"

"In climate it was, but the local wildlife, including me, are far more dangerous than their relatives from Earth. The planet was labelled off-limits to exploration for many centuries by the various powers that would become the Coalition, but eventually some of us manage to reach the stars. After I aided a major faction of the Coalition greatly, they accepted me. However, my homeworld is still not currently in contact with nor aware of the Coalition. That aside, there is something that I really need to speak to you about so that you can think this over in the coming months."

G'Kar nodded "I am listening, Liaison."

"You were told by Kosh that sometimes some must be sacrificed so that the rest can be saved."

"How do you know that?"

"Given a hundred years to wander the Multiverse as a disembodied spirit, one can see a lot of things, especially because your subjective time and objective time are different things." Commander T'Soni replied. The Narn across from her just stared, thinking about how she could have gained experience and wisdom comparable to the First Ones from such an experience (he would also not have been pleased to find Londo had thought that too) until she said "That which you were told was something spoken by someone who has never had to sacrifice anything that mattered to them, which is the case for most Vorlons. Kosh is one of the few that actually care about the younger races as something more than pawns, but even he is obliged to speak as a proper Vorlon should due to a sense of need for propriety. To them, you are all pebbles to be used and discarded in their ideological argument with the Shadows. The Vorlons desire absolute control of you while the Shadows believe that strife brings strength. Neither are fully wrong, but both are going about this in the stupidest way possible."

"That sounds about accurate." G'Kar said. "But sacrifice is necessary, you acknowledge this?"

"Sacrifice is only sacrifice when it is fully understood by the opposite party. For example, throwing yourself in front of someone to shield them from a projectile is sacrifice, grabbing someone and putting them in front of you or anyone else as a meat shield, while useful in combat, is murder, however you glorify it."

G'Kar opened his mouth again to reply and continue what promised to be a long and interesting conversation, although it was kind of hard to argue with her last point. His interest in the Coalition's philosophies and culture had been piqued some more. However, while he didn't press it and knew full well what they were doing, he still didn't walk away with any information that they didn't decide to give him.

* * *

_CSC Surveyor, 105 km from B5, Local date April 26, 2260, Coalition date April 6, 3872_

"They took six days to establish an effective embargo and have spent the past two days using privateers to attack civilian shipping who are down-timing in nearby systems." Liara whined while going over more data collected from the various other species at the mess table "Life here is so _slow_…"

"I thought being old was supposed to mean you were more mature and less prone to whining?" Urz asked as he too worked on researching the locals.

"Dude, I've been wandering so long observing the universe that now I'm actually alive I want to _do something_."

"Go pleasure yourself then." The Devouring One said.

The red-eyed (literally) Legendary Commander glared at him "I wish I'd gotten Kerrigan the genetic data for bio-electric fielding earlier than a last-minute thing before leaving for this galaxy."

"I'm glad you left it until practically the last minute, I didn't get any genetic schematics so you can't beat me up at will."

"Unless I wanted to kill you, that is."

Urz shrugged, he knew she wouldn't do anything untoward except maybe hurt him with her mind for a few moments, which wouldn't be much compared to the searing pain he remembered from when the Overmind had died. "You know full well that I'd just rejoin the Zerg hive mind and be poured into new Zerg bodies, right?"

"Of course."

Currently, their Ship Gantry count stood static at seventy-five (two rounds of "mitosis"), the limit that they had been authorized to build for the mission. Their fleet however had swollen to and been (for now) held steady at four hundred assorted "proper" warships ranging from Light Destroyers and Light Cruisers to Battle Cruisers and Escort Carriers. All had full hangar bays but no externally-anchored starfighters, and were parked in deep space within one light-year of Babylon Five, programmed to evade inbound objects including ships in hyperspace and Quantum Jump into B5 space in the event they were needed. However, the Gantries were silent at last, as this was expected to be enough power to deal with anyone at the moment except the Vorlons and Shadows. It was not expected that they would need to fight those two races in the near future, so the gantries weren't cranking out ships like mad for now and were packed up in their more nimble configuration. Gantry One had not been involved in the continuous construction over the past few weeks so as to not alarm the locals even more than they already had.

Interestingly, if the lack of shielding and structural field technology applied to all ships in this zone of space, then it was likely that in a capital ship slugfest the _Ascendant Justice_, which had arrived two weeks into the contact with B5, would be worth more the fleet they'd assembled in terms of raw volley yield, especially given the plasma torpedoes and pulse laser batteries onboard were no slouches against unshielded/fielded targets, and there were hundreds of them, enough to smother multiple Coalition capital ships per volley if they didn't use quantum tactical jumps to blink around while remaining approximately in formation and their positions. "Commander, we've intercepted another call for aid against pirates, directed at _Babylon Five_." Kasumi reported.

Commander T'Soni, who was back onboard for the time being, remarked "Commander Ivanova has complained of never getting there on time over the last couple days. I think we've let the B5 command crew stew for long enough. It's time to offer help. Hail _Babylon Five_."

Kasumi responded almost immediately with "They're answering." Captain Sheridan's face appeared on-screen.

"Captain, we'd like to help you with the pirate problem."

"We'll take all the help we can get. Susan and her people are headed for the Jump gate now. The destination is a freighter that has been forced to come out of Hyperspace by eddies. The first strike of the pirates disabled its jump drives and they are chasing it down slowly. They're headed to the nearest Jumpgate to them but are still an hour away."

"Where are they? Which system are they in?" Sheridan gave the data and the Legendary Commander, after nodding acknowledgement and flicking the microphone off, ordered "Gate two recon probes from the ACU bay to target and prepare for Quantum Jump" Liara toggled the communications options "Commander Ivanova, this is T'Soni from the _Surveyor_, do you read me?"

"Loud and clear, _Surveyor_."

"Please fly to some of the unoccupied docking clamps that we have illuminated for you so that we can attach you to our hull for the trip." That was done using a Zapper as a big flashlight (and yes, it was possible to use the turrets, with the right settings, as flood-lights).

Susan's reply was "Understood, _Surveyor_. Are you going to use that FTL technique of yours?"

"Yes." Liara toggled her microphone off again "Caprica, be prepared to shut down all the pirate ship's systems when we arrive and to download all their logs."

Susan toggled her channel, though the Coalition crew was still listening in "Okay people, we're going to have lots of company with us, see the battleship that's approaching us? They're going to help."

"I suspect they'll be doing the job for us." One of the pilots commented.

"That sounds about right by their size, but we're not that lazy, are we?" Susan asked jokingly as they approached the battle cruiser's hull and were tractored onto the docking clamps. Artificial gravity and inertial control covered them just before the ship vanished in a soft flash of light.

* * *

_CSC Surveyor, Near Brakiri Jumpgate Nine, Local date April 26, 2260, Coalition date April 6, 3872_

"What. The. Hell?" Susan said slowly as her fighter's window panes gained a soft glow and the surroundings shifted abruptly.

Information filled her display with a video feed of a holographic representation of the battle space with two recon probes highlighted nearby, the pirate ship and nineteen pirate fighters. They were some distance from the pirate vessel, near the damaged freighter and the fighters, and were striking hard. Multiple missiles soared toward each fighter, vaporizing them thoroughly while the mother ship just sat there as if dead in space. "We have disabled all their systems and we are asking them if they want to surrender or die… they say they want to surrender, what do you say about that?"

"They'll be locked up for a very long time, not much else to say, I suppose. Death is too merciful for them with all the stuff they've pulled."

"Then we are in agreement. We will be taking them under tow shortly." The Commander changed the channel to hail the freighter "Freighter, what is your status and how long do you expect your repairs to take?"

"Give us half an hour and we'll be able to get the Jump drive working again." The captain of the freighter answered, coughing a bit from the smoke of a fried console, understandable given one of his engines was half-blown-up and several hull compartments had been breached.

"Alright, take your time, we will move away a bit so you aren't caught in the crossfire that will occur very soon, don't ask questions, just move the opposite direction as we're headed right now as fast as you can." The Commander switched channels again "B5 Starfuries, dock to us right now, this is a trap." She didn't bother turning off the Microphone as she ordered "Kelly, prepare for full broadside fire and emergency pop-upward to evade enemy alpha strikes, remain on current vector until enemy appears."

"Listen to her, people!" Susan barked to the Starfury squadron "What are you talking about Commander T'Soni?" She asked as they docked.

"We are detecting multiple Earth Alliance warships inbound in hyperspace." Xavier Fran's voice stated "Commander T'Soni is preparing for what she called stress relief i.e. a boarding action against the first Omega to shoot at us."

"_What?_"

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A/N: Review replies:

**Spacebar**: you are a wonderful reviewer and give great insights. And no the Coalition wouldn't ignore the barbarians at the gates just because they're practically hopeless. In the Coalition's eyes that would make them far more dangerous and therefore need dealing with ASAP. Still don't think I'll write Star Wars cross any time within about three years, if ever, since I need to write my way through Hannah's time loop and maybe get a bit more done on the SI Archives. For the record though GCs CAN, in-game, tractor units under shields. Harbinger Mk 4's and Titans are most noticeable, one with a bubble shield and the other a personal shield. I'll explain how later. Remember that the Coalition, if its government decided to do it in response to being attacked, can crash a galactic economy in approximately three days (less if news of transactions spread faster), and with the level of corruption in Star Wars…'nuff said. This is not to mention they can quickly develop sensors to detect Force-sensitive i.e. psionic-capable people and either save or terminate them. Your plasma sword aka light-sabre doesn't do a lick of good against anything with acceptable structural fields and any weapons with decent yield (explosions and shrapnel would tear you and your mind-shields to bits, and trying to deflect them would ram your light-sabre into your face), beam size (can't block) or firing rate (ahem, overwhelming them by volume of fire in the arena in Episode 2?), or even physical speed (LOYALIST/TITAN STOMP!) **You should also remember that the Aeon were also once taught from birth that their Way (literally) was the only Way**, though by following the true meaning of the Way (seek to understand each other and respect for life) Xavier and Hannah became friends and eventually much more.

**KleverKilva**: Psi Amps that are enough to work better than what the Legendary Commander can fit into her newfangled "Wonder Launcher" accessory (e.g. X Special 6 which increases her ranged attacks' yield by 9 times, or 4x damage against a bio-electric fielded opponent) would require a lot of space and give a much larger target profile. As for confrontations, not certain at this point. Yes this has the side effect of me needing to make some minor changes to Pokémon history (Wonder Launchers invented long after the Age of Heroines) but hey…

REVIEW! **No updates until I have over three reviews per chapter!** I.e. to get this chapter you needed 25 or more reviews, to get the next one, 28, etc. I don't think that's too much to ask now is it? And please provide at least some actual feedback, not just two words to increase the review count.


	10. Death By -Lunatic- Legend

A/N: If I wasn't waiting for **Spacebar** (because I owe him that at least for reviewing every chapter of this fic almost immediately after publishing and giving a load of useful technical advice), I'd probably have put this chapter up a bit earlier. Then again it WAS a good feeling seeing reviews pour in, although it saddens me that I had to put my foot down to get them.

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**Please imagine a strikethrough (i.e. crossed out) on the "Lunatic" in the chapter title for the full reading experience. Thank you.**

Chapter 10: Death By -Lunatic- Legend

_Near Brakiri Jumpgate Nine, Local date April 26, 2260, Coalition date April 6, 3872_

"Is she crazy?" Susan asked incredulously, filing the fact that they could track ships in hyperspace from normal space away in her mind.

"No, she also told Caprica to play an early-2000s song called 'Indestructible' on the Omega she'll be boarding and to download the security feeds. She'll also have a live feed holographic camera linked to us to record this fight. You will get to watch the live feed." Xavier sounded amused, and he was, because the Omegas hiding in Slipspace had been detected by the probes and confirmed by the _Surveyor_'s sensors as soon as they had arrived, and only now had begun to move into positions to decant into normal space in their face.

"Okay then…" Susan said slowly.

Six jump points opened less than fifty kilometres from the _Surveyor_, all of which were ahead of them, probably directed by the two Earth Alliance "stealth" probes in the area near where the Coalition probes were hanging out. "Evasives!" Xavier barked "Damn they're close!" He cursed as the Surveyor shot directly upward relative to its own orientation and the system's ecliptic. They were currently situated roughly fifteen hundred kilometres from the freighter and the disabled pirate ship. All six inbound Omegas fired their alpha strikes at the now violently evading _Surveyor_ which was spewing the last 120 of its 600 T3 starfighters from its bays in approximately half a second while the earlier wings formed up for attack runs on their opponents, one hundred and twenty headed for each one except the Omega that had fired first, that one fell silent after a couple volleys due to hacking by Caprica.

This mass launch speed was part of why quantum storage was only used on naval carriers or CZARs, they had "low" (Coalition standards) launch rates compared to racks of idling units due to command system resynchronization. In those applications, it didn't make too much of a difference with how slow accelerations had to be in-atmosphere anyways to avoid easy long-range detection by atmospheric disturbance that the stealth systems couldn't mask above a certain threshold. That meant the aircraft had some time to re-sync inside the carrier's hull but not the storages before launching.

"Give them one warning to stop." The five Omegas that hadn't been the first to fire fired a volley of nuclear missiles that were all swatted by Zappers. "Broadside fire on the last three Omegas to fire." Xavier ordered icily as the fleeing freighter and disabled pirate ship, which had outlived its usefulness, were blown to bits by EA pulse cannon fire. "only primary and secondary anti-ship armament. Slice the second and third with the lasers."

Susan noted visually but did not feel the ship whip around ninety degrees while continuing its upward flight, to present its broadside before rolling as it fired a maximized volley at the three Earth Force ships. This configuration allowed slamming all of the primary anti-ship weapons except the fifteen Heavy Microwave Lasers into the opponents. This meant twenty Heavy Oblivion Cannon pulses, four Scathis shells, ten Mavor shells, and four Salvation bursts being sent down-range. All of the secondary anti-ship weapons were also sent at them since all the turrets had been slewed out to the sides as soon as the order had been given to prepare for broadside fire, before the jump points opened practically on top of them.

The Ultrachromatic Beam Generators (aka phasers) hit the target first, boring into the hulls harshly. They worked nominally by de-phasing at a pre-set range (usually set to two metres post-surface) inside the target's armour, heating up a small section inside the armour and vaporizing it, thus blasting craters in the hull, though against structural fields they would effectively function as a burst laser. After that came the Mavor and Triple Gauss/Proton cannon shells and later-fired UBG beams, followed by the inclusion of the other projectiles. The rest was a deluge of fire that, along with bomber and gunship fire in two cases, shredded the front half of three of the Omegas, rendering them completely inoperable. The Heavy Microwave Lasers, along with most of the Ravagers, cut up the two others' command sections as they tried to turn to run.

"Caprica, disable those jump drives in case they get things working through a secondary bridge somewhere… What a difference shielding and manoeuvrability makes." Xavier growled, his own shields were down to _fifty-two_ percent from a _quarter_ of the alpha strike's plasma cannon shots (though also taking all of the deluge of pulse laser fire and a few particle cannon shots which cost about 11% of his shields) since Ravagers had not been brought to bear quickly enough against some of the shots. If they had emerged from Hyperspace just a little closer and hit him with the full alpha strike, his ship would have been badly damaged or perhaps even wrecked. But the Earth Alliance ships hadn't been able to jump with pinpoint accuracy, and so it was they who were destroyed.

They had made the mistake of presuming the Battle Cruiser to be an easier target because it was smaller, and were only half-right in that it had far less shielding than the Ship Gantry. They would need to be more careful in their strategies, as they found out painfully over the ten seconds' worth of "fighting". Although, the main and decisive difference between the combatants was from the shields and structural fields of the Coalition ship and not from some weaponry inadequacy on the Earth Alliance side. No, the EA weapons yields were quite remarkable, higher than even Coalition capabilities, for their weapons sizes. Then again they didn't need to worry about sensor profile as much as Coalition designs did, so energy signatures could be much larger and recharge rates much higher for a given amount of energy.

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**A/N: I strongly recommend you play the song "Indestructible" by Disturbed in the background as you read the following section. Use the official music video that can be found on YouTube. After reading it, sit back and play the song again while you imagine the action sequence in your mind.**

Take note of how this will sound remarkably similar in terms of being unstoppable to any boarding actions by the Yonji Sinhindrea against Earth Alliance ships, minus the "snacking along the way" bits and plus music.

* * *

_EAS Styx, Near Brakiri Jumpgate Nine, Local date April 26, 2260, Coalition date April 6, 3872_

Onboard the _Styx_, the crew had found suddenly that none of their systems were responding to their inputs. Yes, life support still worked and the reactors were still online, but the weapons, the reactor controls, and everything else that was important had stopped responding. However, over the speakers came some sort of quiet tune that sounded like an old-fashioned air-raid alarm. A young crewman in Engineering was walking around a reactor room to see what was wrong with the reactor when he almost walked right into someone dressed in a green and white gown, with a strange accessory in black and red worn on her right wrist, the triangle on one end of it pointed back at her. "Who are… INTRUDER, WE HAVE INTRUDERS ON BOARD!" He yelled just as the sounds of an electric guitar came over the speakers.

"Kid, if you hadn't shouted that so loudly, I'd have let you go raise the alarm and then get to an escape pod." She shook her head sadly, having teleported in a brief time ago and scanned the ship for the minds of the crew already. She had copied a relatively new invention from her homeworld—they called it a "Wonder Launcher" over there—but she had seen no need to use it. A brief mental scan of her surroundings had told her that unless she wanted to put a hole straight through however many walls were in the way and puncture the pressure hull with just the Void energies of a Shadow Ball, her lowest-yield favoured move, she shouldn't give herself any X Specials. Even X Speeds were unnecessary since she had plenty of time to fire up her real attacks with how easy it was to detect minds around here. So she'd stood around for a few moments waiting for people to notice her and scanning the crew's minds.

"Sure, like you wouldn't shoot me in the back as soon as I tried to run." The kid was eyeing her looking for any weapons.

She extended her hand "You know, I'd recommend you…" He grabbed it and tried to twist it around to no avail as her arm remained immobile due to her bio-electric fields. His strength would have been vastly inadequate even if her fields had been down. The last thing he ever did was stare at her in shock as she finished with "…not try that."

The words of the song started playing in the background as she snuffed the kid's life out by mentally grabbing his head and squeezing sharply from all sides except the top, which wasn't even a real attack requiring field usage by her standards. A fountain of pulverized flesh and still-pumping blood shot into the air as the speakers belted out "Another mission the powers have called me away," She was already gone from the scene, darting across the room without even touching the ground and only kicking off a reactor casing to gain speed faster. She broke into the reactor control room and gunned down its inhabitants in a flash while the speakers boomed "another time to carry my colors again" She exited the control room and fired a powered-down plasma stream to melt the door into place. In the meantime, the speakers were calling out throughout the ship "My motivation an oath I've sworn to defend, to win the honour of coming back home again."

The sound of running feet in the corridor outside Engineering drew her attention while the speakers chanted "No explanation will matter after we begin." and she slammed open the door to be met with a deluge of PPG fire from onboard security forces. "Unlock the dark destroyer that's buried within. My true vocation and now my unfortunate friend…" The fire slackened and stopped as bits of vaporized hallway, exploding pieces of wall, and smoke occluded the sight of the marines, but it passed moments later to reveal the green and white themed woman not even scratched, holding a glowing whitish-yellowish ball in the air before her "…you will discover a war you're unable to…" On the drawn-out "win" a beam of pale yellow destruction shot from the cloud of particulate smoke that had re-filled the doorway to Engineering when they opened fire again. The beam electrocuted anyone who came into contact with it and at least partly charred them. Their clothes burst into flames, some of their flesh exploded in steam, and all of them dying almost immediately due to the inadequacies of their minimal body armour.

"I'll have you know… that I've become indestructible." The music from the speakers had continued after a brief moment of static from the near-solid electron beam that had just been fired interfering with it. The Commander advanced into the hallway, whipping out her pistols from under her green and white uniform and gunning down any single resisting targets not worth using real firepower on. "Determination that is incorruptible. From the other side a terror to behold…" She levitated by the crater that had resulted when her powered-down Thunderbolt had made contact with the wall. With the line "Annihilation will be unavoidable" she gathered the beginnings of a Focus Blast in her hands and shredded her way through the next doorway, not firing at full power to avoid potentially damaging the ship structurally… the song then reached the lines of "Every broken enemy will know… that their opponent had to be invincible."

Liara didn't encounter further resistance until the next hallway where crewmen with their side-arms had set up defensive positions "Take a last look around while you're alive, I'm an indestructible Master of War…" the song had gone as she crushed their bodies and cover with a use of the move called Psychic back home where she came from.

"Another reason, another cause for me to fight. Another fuse uncovered now for me to light. My dedication to all that I've sworn to protect." She grimaced internally to herself remembering how abysmally her Origin had failed in that task for most of the things she'd sworn to protect, then loosed off another toned-down Focus Blast that blew the next bulkhead out like a giant fragmentation grenade. The PPG fire coming back from the survivors was weak at best, but she didn't feel like taunting them with _A just-hatched Vulpix could _sneeze_ more plasma than that_ (technically not true given the volume of fire being thrown at her) as she shot her way through the room, still levitating. Rabid nerd fan-clubs were not among the things she wanted out of life at this point in time.

"I carry out my orders without a regret. My declaration embedded deep under my skin" the line had passed while she was blasting her way into this section of the ship, and it sounded slightly inaccurate as she rubbed her fingers over the shrunken-down sphere currently attached to a thin metal chain around her neck and tucked inside her white shirt. That sure wasn't under her skin… though it was under her outer bio-electric fields "A permanent reminder of how it began" Yep, she still had her Origin's memory of registering with her old (and now very reincarnated) friend for the first time to go out into the world together. "No hesitation when I am commanded to strike." _Well duh, you can't hesitate in a fight when your partner points something out to you or has a strategy in mind for you to use._ She thought as she flew through an empty corridor "You need to know that you're in for the fight of your life…"

She was at the first docking ring (counting from the stern) of the rotating section now, so she had to be a bit more careful not to mess up the rotation too badly or it could—at least in her imagination as to how it might affect the vessel—break the spine of the ship before the song was over. "You will be shown…How I've become indestructible. Determination that is incorruptible. From the other side a terror to behold. Annihilation will be unavoidable. Every broken enemy will know… that their opponent had to be invincible. Take a last look around while your alive, I'm an indestructible Master of War…" The song went through a stanza as she hurtled down one of the corridors running the length of the central shaft of the ship, terminating targets that appeared from side hallways with laser pistol fire and blowing through bulkheads and doors with a mixed assortment of attacks. A wall of PPG fire was practically following her as she blazed down the hall, coming from the troops who'd used the other main corridors and the secondary corridors to get behind her. After the music went into an instrumental-only interlude, she broke through the bulkhead at the bow end of the main transit corridor by launching another Focus Blast ahead of her. She then turned as she passed through the broken-down doorway, preparing yet another attack, the unrelenting PPG fire splattering against her bio-electric fields to no significant effect.

_These people will need to figure out that solid projectile weapons will do better as it's my Physical Defence field aspects that will react to those instead of Special Defence… I mean, I naturally have a pretty crap base stat for Defence… though being ultra-levelled and having my genetic bonus overcomes it handily in any regular battle. The only strain I bothered noting the stats of that's more imbalanced toward base Spec stats than me is Volcarona…_ The Commander thought as she threw off a moderated torrent of plasma (a much-downgraded "Fire Blast") that was only amplified by the confined space of the hallways, vaporizing the soldiers using adjacent secondary hallways as cover, flash-cooking some of those further away and burning the rest, whose screams replaced the now-silenced speakers. She continued moving toward the bridge of the ship as the song's words started up again "I'm indestructible…" she tuned it out as she reached the bridge and broke down the door with a gently-applied version of the energy projectile termed a Shadow Ball back where she came from and probably a Void Sphere or something along those lines among the Protoss.

"Good day, mindless slaves of Clark the dictator." She greeted the bridge crew, who had entrenched themselves as best they could behind their consoles with their sidearms.

"Who are you?" The captain bravely called out.

"Someone who chose to crush Clark's little fascist daydream which you are upholding and fighting for. Listen carefully to the song." It had reached its last stanza now.

"…From the other side a terror to behold. Annihilation will be unavoidable." Some of the bridge crew ignored her advice and started firing at. She walked to the middle of the back wall of the bridge, looking bored as the helium-based plasma projectiles pitter-pattered off her bio-electric fields. _Wow… just… wow, my conscious recharge rate is higher than the rate at which they're doing damage._ She thought with a mental eye-roll as stood there and watched them with an air of ennui. "Every broken enemy will know… that their opponent had to be invincible." Commander T'Soni called to the bridge crew, shouting along with the next line of the song "Take a last look around while you're alive!"

Then, as the song hit "I'm an indestructible…" she turned around to face toward the rear of the ship, charged up a large, glowing orange sphere in mere seconds and let fly with a full-powered Hyper Beam straight down the center line of the ship. The last half of the line and the last words of the song, which was "…Master of WAR!" was completely drowned out by the thunderous explosion of a large amount of supercritical metal losing pressure and thus vaporizing at once along the central shaft that had just been added to the ship. Compartments on both sides were blasted with gaseous metal and a few fragments of shattered, semi-molten wall. Having fired the beam from her position and having it wider across than she was tall, Commander T'Soni didn't receive any of the sometimes literal splash damage since she was still firing when the initial vaporization and outbound pressure waves occurred, and the beam washed away the pressure waves moving inward toward the centerline of the ship.

_It's good to have a live-fire test of my capabilities, seems they're still up to scratch. _She thought as she stood out of the way of the wind rushing toward the hole in the ship's rear end. "Transport as many to safety as you can!" She barked into her comms "I'll edit their memories later!" She clarified while waiting for her fields to re-equilibrate, which usually took about ten seconds after a powerful move like that that didn't cause recoil damage or harmonic destabilization (i.e. stat drop). Then she teleported outside, feeling her layered bio-electric fields holding against the vacuum without trouble while the ship vented stuff both from the rear and from secondary explosions across its surface, she took a few seconds to recover her field harmonic so that she could fire again. Then she charged up and fired another full-strength Hyper Beam, off to one side from the shaft her first Hyper Beam had punched through most of the spaceship, just to finish it for good.

* * *

_CSC Surveyor, Near Brakiri Jumpgate Nine, Local date April 26, 2260, Coalition date April 6, 3872_

Susan Ivanova was gaping along with, she was sure, every one of her pilots as they looked outside in time to watch the first bright orange particle cannon blast rip out of the Omega between the thrusters on the engine block and continue off into space. The metal music continued on its final stretch, complemented by secondary explosions tearing through the Earth Alliance ship's surface. The song began to fade from her speakers when a second beam fired from a point a few hundred metres in front of the ship tore through its length, displaced toward one side compared to the previous beam.

It was the side Liara hadn't advanced down as she'd gone through the ship and the reactors, though Susan didn't know that. The ship's reactors finally blew up at that point as bits of hull fragments and other pieces drifted off into space. The fires went out soon enough from lack of oxygen, but the glow of the metal continued as Susan and crew watched in stupefaction as Commander T'Soni's camera perspective shifted suddenly to outside their Starfuries. They looked up to see her waving at them without any form of protection aside from her usual attire, before she somehow propelled herself up along the side of the hull, vanishing from the B5 squadron's sight by going around an edge.

They looked toward each other's fighters wordlessly. They could see their wingmen looking back at them. There was silence for a long moment before Susan slowly said "None of us will ever speak of this unless she tells the public first or we wish to be committed to an asylum for life, is that understood?" It might be stating the obvious, but some people might not have realized it otherwise.

"Yes ma'am." Her men replied one by one, noticeably subdued.

"Also, please refrain from angering the Liaison in the future if it is at all, remotely, even a little bit, possible." Susan deadpanned

"Yes ma'am." Her pilots chorused good-naturedly, although they could all hear the amusement in each other's voices. Amusement was the best they could do, as the alternative was panicking about having someone able to core an Omega twice within twenty seconds onboard _Babylon Five_.

"Hey guys!" Commander T'Soni's faces appearing on their screens prompted at least three of the Starfury pilots to jump in their seats as the startled yelps (and sniggers from others) attested. "Well, stress venting went well, it's been a long time since I was able to strike out against the grunts of an evil organization like that." Yes, a bit over nine hundred years, in fact. "And yes, before you even ask, my species is usually vacuum-proof." As long as they didn't lose their bio-electric fields, they could deal with vacuum exposure indefinitely, in fact. "It's also impossible to fire attacks while asleep other than a sonic attack or, if you have the right training, and even those cannot be triggered when not at least somewhat conscious enough to be adequately aware of our surroundings. Therefore, there is no risk to _Babylon Five_ by letting me sleep on the station. In fact, there is more risk by letting Kosh sleep there than by letting me do so. Anyhow, we're recovering survivors by teleportation form the ships and treating their wounds. Looks like we'll have a few thousand more prisoners to give back to Earth Force soon. I have to go help edit the memories of the guys we nabbed off the _Styx_ soon, any questions?"

"Uh, okay?" Susan said, blinking. She hadn't quite considered that part yet, mostly still focusing on the _"HOW THE FUCK"_ aspect of the "boarding action". While mulling over this discovery, they watched the Coalition warship use its many hundreds of large starfighters to thoroughly destroy all evidence that they were here and all records of the battle save theirs. "Commander T'Soni, should I have my men wipe their gun cam footage?"

"Well, I think… yes, that would be a good idea."

"Well, everyone, you heard her, no evidence that this encounter ever happened. We don't need even more stuff for Clark to use against _Babylon Five_! Also, I hope none of you want to be institutionalized for coming out with something that seems to everyone else to be so clearly computer-generated! I mean, even if we did it together, we'd probably still be dismissed as playing a joke on everyone else." Susan ordered. The Starfury pilots looked at one another, then shrugged and did as they were told, figuring the Coalition would probably hack their computers to make sure anyways. She voiced what they were thinking "Besides, it's not like they went about killing witnesses specifically, other than making an example of the first Omega to open fire. It's not like we wouldn't have destroyed the threats as much as we could if it was us on the other end of those Omegas' guns. They're probably saving more people than we could have even if we'd been able to force the Earth Alliance ships to surrender, if we had enough capital ships of our own to do it."

* * *

Even as they thoroughly cleaned up the battle space, Xavier was arguing with Liara about the wisdom of that episode of marauding. He threw up his arms in exasperation and left after she said "Well, you need to subject an implement of war to real combat if you want to test it properly, even though this was hardly real combat by my standards and I only used part of my move-set, I can still be sure now that I'm really up to scratch. It's not like I had time to go back to Earth II and challenge one of the Monitors there to a one-on-one fight, just finding time to introduce Kerrigan to my homeworld was hard enough, and going around to stomp around on most others would just be bullying."

They quantum-jumped into B5 space with another soft pulse of light. Interestingly, this distinctive flash was not something that was ever used to pinpoint enemy ACU entries, and neither was, back in the old days, the typical ripple of an ACU gating in and the circle of flattened trees. The reason was simple: there had been enough distraction tactics using those characteristics of gating that it was not a good idea to react to them too haphazardly. Also, Mass Deposits weren't that uncommon, so potential base areas within operating areas were plentiful enough that it wasn't reasonable to patrol all of them. Because of that and the fact that the civilians didn't want to live with too much of a constant military presence, they had had to strike a balance between security and ambient tension, a balance resulting in a few local fortifications plus evacuative quantum gates, with commanders coming in when needed. The Earth Alliance ISN took several hours after Liara and the B5 fighter pilots had returned to the station and briefed Sheridan on what had happened to actually report anything.

"Six Earth Alliance warships were suddenly and violently attacked near Brakiri jump gate nine several hours ago. The last transmissions from them were distress calls stating that they had been ambushed by the renegade forces aligned with _Babylon Five_." The video showed a clip of the broadside roll the Coalition warship had executed as a hail of shells and beams lanced toward the camera before it dissolved into static. It rewound a bit before pausing to show the wreckage of the freighter and pirate vessel that the Omegas had blown up. "As we can clearly see here, the alien battleship had destroyed two freighters already, evidenced by their wreckage, before opening fire on the Earth Force warships investigating the freighters' distress calls without provocation. All six warships and both civilian vessels were lost with all hands, no survivors were found at the site by other ships arriving in response to the distress calls."

Sheridan's video feed showed him and Delenn, sitting together, frowning at the Earth Alliance's bullshit. Xavier's showed him smiling at the words, and Commander T'Soni's video feed from her room (office) on B5 showed her yawning slightly wider than any human of her head size could usually manage. "The individual responsible for this despicable act of cowardice has been identified as Grand Crusader Xavier Fran of the Coalition spacecraft _Surveyor_, representing an organization responsible for spreading chaos and conflict in their section of the galaxy and which is encroaching on this sector. He and his underlings have associated themselves with Captain John Sheridan and his band of traitors who hold _Babylon Five_ hostage." The view screen showed a profile image of Xavier's face set back to back with the image of Sheridan's face. Then it cut to a video of an Earth Alliance officer identified as General Brindley, who seemed deep in thought with a frown on his face.

* * *

_ISN HQ, Geneva, Earth (Andromeda), Local date April 26, 2260, Coalition date April 6, 3872_

Brindley was glumly thinking that Drake was right, they needed a larger hit ratio with the pulse cannons of their alpha strikes they were to succeed against the Coalition warships. The last transmissions included sensor data that said the energy signature of the shields had dropped by somewhere between one-third to two-thirds from what little the sensors could pick up (the result of having adaptive plating, all camouflage and all stealth down). So it was a rational conclusion to think that if only they could have hit the target with more than a quarter of their pulse cannon shots… yeah. "Recently, I met Captain Sheridan face-to-face to try to negotiate a peaceful resolution to this escalating conflict. Xavier Fran was rather belligerent and even went so far as to ask me what made me think it was a negotiation. They were interested in nothing less than dictating terms to us. They even used one of their telepaths to brainwash a member of my staff into joining their insurrection. There was no regulation of their telepaths and this frankly astounded me. Fortunately they were content with that little gesture and I at least think my mind is still mine. My remaining staff and I were given the boot after the talks broke down, complete with a threat of defenestration." He didn't bother clarifying that it was in a hundreds-of-metres-tall hangar bay and not out an airlock "I was concerned for the safety of my staff and I as we left. With their attitudes, I wasn't sure if they would blow up my shuttle or not."

Brindley and quite a few officers had gone over the last transmissions of the Omega and the results were not promising for Earth Force. Those ships were absurdly manoeuvrable if the quick barrel-roll broadside and subsequent re-orientation to present the frontally-concentrated battery of heavy lasers was any indication. Then again it might just be the smaller battleship that could do it and not the larger one, which seemed less manoeuvrable when they compared the recordings. Still, the way the battle cruiser had responded it was like they had expected something like the ambush to be sprung on them. Regardless of their difficult-to-counter evasive manoeuvres, the shields were abysmally powerful and something had to be done about them. "Sheridan seemed unresponsive throughout the conversation. I believe he too had been brainwashed by the Coalition telepaths, assuming he wasn't under other alien influence to begin with, something which seems unlikely to me at best. He and Ambassador Delenn of the Minbari were said in the gossip on _Babylon Five_ to have been spending far more time together than appropriate. Regardless of whether it was brainwashing or a honey trap, although I fail to see how it could be the latter, Sheridan is no longer the man we once knew. He was a good officer once, but that good officer is no more…"

The news anchor started to ask "General, what about the Coalition…"

Brindley held up a hand and smiled "I thought you'd ask this soon enough. I firmly believe that the Coalition warships are a vanguard for an invasion of this sector of space."

"But if six of Earth Force's most powerful warships were destroyed so easily, and more were wrecked at the Battle of Babylon Five, what can we do to bolster our defences against them?"

"We need more spending on military research and experimental weapons technologies. President Clarke has the right idea with how he just bumped up our research budget. He was correct with respect to the dangers of alien influences, we must exercise constant vigilance."

* * *

_Babylon Five, Local date April 26, 2260, Coalition date April 6, 3872_

Commander T'Soni snorted suddenly at that as the video showed the news anchor speaking again "It's nothing" she said as others glanced at her. _Ancient book series reference, circa 2000 AD, and a pathetic reality in quite a few of the universes in the Multiverse._ She thought as the image switched to show Clark, a balding, stressed-looking man in his early fifties looking quite sombre, and she hissed/snarled furiously at the image of his face before realizing what she was doing and shutting up.

"This day… was one I prayed would never happen." Commander T'Soni's green-gloved hands curled into fists as she considered how much evil she had seen come from religion in her wanderings and how little good she had seen come from them. "Alien forces have, without provocation, attacked and destroyed Earth Alliance warships and thousands of loyal, brave soldiers. They have declared war on the people of Earth in a manner not unlike when the former United States was pulled into war with the Japanese Empire almost three hundred and twenty years ago. And I say this as the president of that great country did, but to the enemies of the planet Earth: You have awakened a sleeping giant!"

"He didn't even get the quote right." Sheridan muttered, not noticing that Commander T'Soni had said the exact same thing. The woman had then noticed Delenn take his hand in hers and, at the same time as Fran, smirked knowingly at the woman.

Xavier spoke next, drawing Sheridan's attention while Clark continued yapping "Let him blab, what he truly fears now is loss of control and erosion of his power. He is one who would rather kill everyone than relinquish control, which is exactly why I plan on straight-jacketing him for life when we finally nab him. There is nothing crueller to a control freak." He grinned viciously "His time will come. Justice will come." The grin disappeared as he said "Let's hope the currently uninvolved fleet garrison units stay out of this." _Or a whole lot more blood will be shed and we might actually need to start using our camouflage and stealth technologies…_

Sheridan nodded "Agreed, they're just doing their jobs and trying to protect the colonies. So far our information suggests there's maybe fifteen percent of the military totally under Clark's thumb."

"Our information suggests it is just above thirteen percent but slowly growing with Psi-Corps indoctrinating people all over the place." Commander T'Soni responded "We need to deal with Psi-Corps, and deal with them as soon as feasible, cut off the limbs with which Clark clings to power. And we have to find a way to make the Earth Alliance or you guys do it, because if we get involved I have no doubt the currently neutral Earth Alliance vessels will enter the fray on whatever side opposes us."

Ivanova, who'd come over to watch the broadcast but stayed silent until now, spoke up "That's an accurate assessment, but we'll just need to wait for an opening. The Psi-Corps is bound to send someone to investigate your telepaths very soon and try to force them into the Corps. I suspect they'll get a nasty surprise." She grinned at Commander T'Soni's screen's camera.

"I suspect so too." Liara replied. "We will be ready for them, and we WILL destroy them from the inside."

Ivanova nodded curtly "Excellent."

"How's Mr. Truman doing anyway?" Xavier asked.

"He's fitting in rather well, working down in Security" It had taken a lot of work to get Garibaldi to take the guy "helped foil a smuggling ring yesterday."

"He will be useful when it comes to meeting with Psi-Corps, his presence and defiance will anger their representatives, and that shall be our excuse to act." Commander T'Soni said grimly.

* * *

A/N: **I actually didn't expect so many readers to care enough to review for more updates…** Here be replies to them:

**AdamMc66**: Eventually, they will… make an attempt. (Hah, Yoda, go shove yourself, we present option 3, and it is not "try"!)

**KleverKilva**: Replicators have trouble with heavy elements apparently according to Spacebar. Also, a lot of sci-fi makes NO sense whatsoever. You can use photon torpedoes in orbital battles, which means you're baking half the planet beneath you as you fight. Phasers, if they operate within three or four orders of magnitude compared to photon torpedoes, would be like how some people say SW turbolasers have yields in the gigatons, they would have raped Coruscant's surface in seconds in Episode 3 with STRAY fire.

**DaLintyMan**: Structural field mechanics are a bit complicated and fall into multiple categories, will be covered in fic sooner or later. Robotic crews… no the Coalition isn't stupid enough to do that after seeing the Geth, the Cylons and most importantly the CYBRANS as the consequences of the idea of expendable people.

**Nenfaer (Ch 7)**: Harold Truman will become a recurring character on the B5 side, but let's make it clear right here, right now that Kelly would only be able to crack a P7 or P8 at best if they didn't have a nugget of defiance somewhere deep down inside. The gross difference of rating systems is because very few B5 telepaths are telekinetic, whereas just about every Aeon is telekinetic enough to bring a mug of tea over from their desk, although results may vary depending on skill (all the way up to digging broken ceramic out of one's face). Most people prefer not to get fat and lazy.

**Braf (Guest)**: Sorry for missing that detail (though Susan's POV wouldn't have known), fixed at beginning of this chapter.

**Nenfaer (Ch 8)**: Good point, the Covenant knee-jerk reaction to Coalition warships was plasma projectors by a few weeks into the war, so the Coalition stopped building its smallest units (anything less than 3860 Battle Cruiser aka 3872 Light Frigate) except as unpiloted auxiliaries for patrols on the northern coast against pirates. The Twelve Colonies… er… well, shit happened. And yes, Coalition humans had over 1600 more years to get used to the idea of Psionics and build in/up defences both physiological and (more importantly) mental against them. War made the defensive fortifications more of a priority than ever.

**Spacebar**: Oh, okay, that sounds perfect for the theory I have for how the whole game mechanic works (for GCs and carriers) and your carrier theory is very much like mine. I can however imagine Mace Windu punching the negotiation table and screaming "We were deceived!" if Yoda understands the truth (given how wise and all he's supposed to be, it should be a matter of poking through the window paper and a "how did I not see that" moment as soon as whatever barrier's been holding him back is released) and convinces him.

**Nenfaer (Ch 9)**: Thanks for reviewing again. I explained the ship issue on SI Archive Pt 5 update btw.

REVIEW!


	11. Meeting Aliens and Telepaths

A/N: This update was slower because I didn't have it practically complete when I uploaded the previous chapter. In fact, I didn't even start writing this one until I put up Ch 10.

So, how'd I do in Ch 10 with portraying warm-ups for a Legend? Also, **HOLY SHIT you must watch the "Flail Supreme" and "Angel Supreme" videos, they convey the sheer scale of war in Supreme Commander much better than I could.** While you are watching, remember the size of the units involved (compared to trees which would be about 15-20 metres IRL).

* * *

Chapter 11: Meeting Aliens and Telepaths

_CSC Surveyor, Local date April 26, 2260, Coalition date April 6, 3872_

Xavier Fran turned to the camera perspective feeding to Commander T'Soni (in other words he looked toward her hologram) "Commander T'Soni, I think we should tell the Earth Alliance that we have some people of theirs that we'd like to have taken off our hands."

"Now that we've laundered their memories, you can make the call whenever you feel like." The woman said dismissively.

"Good, everyone, please stay quiet while we override the ISN signals with our own broadcast." There were enough stealthed drones in the Andromeda-Sol system now that they could blanket all broadcasts there without difficulty and without revealing even the approximate positions of their constantly repositioning transmission sources. He pushed a few buttons off-screen but obviously enough to the people on the other side of his feed "Ahem, greetings, people of Earth Alliance, my name is Grand Crusader Xavier Fran." He said cheerfully "You may have realized already that your government is thoroughly bullshitting you. We have several thousand prisoners from the six ships you sent to dishonourably ambush us near Brakiri Jumpgate Nine. We were in the area responding to a distress signal from a freighter under attack by privateers, pirates hired by your government to attack shipping bound for _Babylon Five_."

He paused for a moment to let that sink in "After we disabled the pirate vessel and rescued the freighter, your ships opened jump points almost on top of us and engaged both us and the two bystander ships. Both the freighter and the pirate vessel were destroyed in an attempt to snuff out witnesses and underlings that had exhausted their usefulness. Please send some shuttles to pick up the approximately four thousand captives we are holding. Oh, and remember, President Clark, that petty, nasty dictators get what is coming to them. We have no grievances whatsoever with the rest of Earth Alliance, only your fascist dictator. I would recommend you, the people, stand back for now, since protesting will only get you mown down by Clark's slaves, and wait for the freedom fighters here at _Babylon Five_ to act. We, the Coalition, will work with them so that soon, the dawn will see a liberated Earth Alliance. Have no fear, Earth Alliance, but be scared, Clark, be very scared." He smiled ominously before cutting the transmission.

The news anchor that reappeared on the channel blinked dumbly for a couple seconds after the broadcast stopped, then started with "…er, that was new…"

In the meantime, in a teleconference a long way away, Xavier and Liara were both laughing quietly while the B5 crew chuckled.

* * *

_Zocalo, Babylon Five, Local date April 29, 2260, Coalition date April 9, 3872_

Susan had relaxed considerably near Commander T'Soni over the last two days since she had the impression that if she was going to try something, they couldn't stop her anyways. In other words, if you couldn't beat 'em, join 'em. She had heard of the aliens on the Coalition crew—Stephen (Dr. Franklin) wouldn't shut up about the possibilities they were demonstrating to him and had mentioned the aliens—but she hadn't met any of them in person other than Commander T'Soni before.

…Which meant there was a distinctly awkward silence at the table where they sat after the walk they'd just taken with the Commander, talking about the tour of more of the station than they'd seen on previous trips, which had mainly been to the shadier sections. Directly across from her was the "First One in disguise" as Susan thought of her now. To T'Soni's left was a blue woman with a tentacle-like head crest and no hair—the Minbari would find this interesting, Susan noted. To T'Soni's right was a towering alien that had stood more than a foot over Susan and also over the green-haired woman even when hunched over (and towered more than two feet over Susan and almost two feet over T'Soni when fully upright), with greyish-brown dark grey scaly hide and wearing navy blue armour that was bulkier than the armour Ahn-Ullehesh had worn. To Susan's left was a Coalition human who went by the name Caprica and to her right was a smiling brunette who went by the name of Helena. Next to their table sat a large carapaced and also armoured dog-like creature with four limbs and hands that bore two optionally-opposable thumbs, one on each side of the hand "Well, how was the tour?"

"Acceptable, although I worry about the potential for insurrection among the malcontents in Brown and Grey sectors now that I have seen the Green and Red sectors more thoroughly." Thel Lodam stated in his deep, gritty voice. "The dilapidated state of things and the rushed construction in those sectors compared to the comfortable conditions here leave them a festering sore to which the enemies of the station may congregate like…" He considered the human terms involved for a moment before choosing something more insulting in his opinion than a Dipteran (fly) "Pak'ma'ra to a rotting corpse." The Sangheili had upon learning of them immediately taken a intense distaste to that race as a scavenger race. Yes, he was working on getting over it, but he was still not interested in seeing one of the things eye to eye at this point, if ever.

"It was very interesting to see all these species here in a station they built themselves." Mirala stated, looking out from the open-air restaurant from which they could see a good chunk of the station. "And it's interesting that despite the solid-hull design you still have a need for open spaces, a need which is so great that you use the precious space inside the solid hull for it." The Coalition crew all knew what she was talking about, the Citadel was a lobed construct, so there was no need (and it was also unreasonable) to maximize usage of the valuable pressurized space inside, but since this one was sealed…

Susan shrugged "Well, I suppose the designers thought it would be a good idea. This place seems to be good for morale for most of the diplomats and command crew though. It's where we come when we want to remember why we're here and what we're fighting for. This station was designed as our last, best hope for peace… and we've failed our objective." She sighed, her jaw setting itself defiantly, the Shadows were coming, and if peace meant surrender, then peace could go shove itself. She had briefed Sheridan about Morden and had a suspicion that Commander T'Soni already knew about him if her once-outrageous (and as of two days ago considerably less so) claims about herself were true. She was still wondering, despite their promise of continued support, if they should be frank with the Coalition people.

Mirala shook her head sharply and Susan noted that her fringe wobbled slightly like a human's ears would, like cartilage, unlike Commander T'Soni's hair and ears, which both seemed as stiff as a Minbari's bone fringe when she moved her head "No, the fact that you are able to work together in relative harmony and get this place built in the first place, without the station being divided among factions complete with intense urban combat on a daily basis means that you have succeeded far more than you have failed. Yes, there will always be enemies to the idea of strength from unity, but you also have powerful allies who will aid you when the decisive time comes."

"I concur with her assessment." Helena stated while Thel and Caprica merely nodded. "I like how people can coexist here without trying to murder each other, I sense freedom here."

"This station is quite impressive, and is based on a lofty set of goals that seem to epitomize what the best of humanity stands for, here and elsewhere, although sometimes it is not the case when they are blinded by religious zeal." Caprica looked across Susan at Helena and smiled warmly "However, if they can overcome that zeal, then they still have those ideals, somewhere deep down." Her eyes flicked downward teasingly as the smile turned into a smirk.

Helena did a head-desk in reply and muttered into the table "And they say men think with their libido… or act like it at least. Caprica, can you find a lower priority slot in your brain for that subroutine when we're out in public?"

Susan tilted her head curiously at Caprica "What do you mean subroutine? Are you one of those people who've convinced themselves that they're computers and like to talk in such terms? Nice tattoos by the way, very few people are gutsy enough to get them done on their faces."

Sensing no malice in the question, Caprica flicked some of her hair back over her shoulders as she responded. "Well, I started my existence as an AI, but since then I've come to accept this bio-synthetic fusion body I have here." She pulsed a bit of orange light through the mostly decorative conduits on her left cheek and Susan blinked, looking stumped.

"So you're some sort of… gynoid?" The B5 Commander asked.

Caprica tilted her head from side to side in a non-committal fashion before speaking "More or less, although I'm a lot more meat than metal. I'm a Cylon, built from a mixture of organic and synthetic parts, not like the typical Cybran who receives their nanites and implants shortly after birth." There were "Cybrans" that chose to align with the other factions, but those were uncommon and the implants typically didn't hamper their integration much if at all other than a few of the older, more conservative folks who weren't old enough for war fatigue to have set in muttering about it. These were mostly the folks who had been young adults when the Infinite War ended.

"Judging by your appearance, were you built for, er…" Susan flicked her eyes up and down Caprica's lightly armoured form to state her point. It seemed to her that these people wore their armour whenever they left their quarters, even though some forms concealed less of one's figure than others.

"My initial model was an infiltration and seduction platform, yes, but I was far from just a sentient sex doll, and now, I'm even farther from that. I'm as much a citizen of the Coalition as the Grand Crusader is."

"It looks like you and Helena once had some differences over the issue of you being synthetic."

"Her people, a group of lost colonies that the Forerunners seeded with primitive humans mixed with a very few Forerunners, unlike our Earth where the number of Forerunners was significant, tried to exterminate mine after they created us. We fled and were rescued by the Cybran Nation. They met… unfortunate circumstances during the war with the Covenant, so very little of them survives. The survivors have received genetic modifications to get them up to scratch and been assimilated into UEF society." Caprica explained. She had been given permission by Liara and Xavier.

"They managed to give us the lifespan of Coalition humans, almost completely reconstructed us, much more thorough than what the Vorlons purposefully did to Delenn, which was a pretty bad job according to our Chief Medical Officer's opinion over the mess table. So now I'll be around Caprica for quite a long time and I look a lot better than I ever did before my transformation." She pretended to preen a little, running a hand through her hair, and Lodam's mandibles twitched in amusement.

Susan opened her mouth, then shut it again, looking over to her right at the being sitting between Helena and Mirala "And you, Urz?" It was an… interesting name to say the least.

"This is a fun place, although I have a feeling half the inhabitants would run for it if I extended my scythes while running around." The Devouring One replied, shrugging.

"I never would have dreamed of something like this even a month ago." Susan shook her head with a small smile. "My whole life has been turned upside-down but I feel more than okay about it."

Commander T'Soni chipped in with "Typical Russian background attitude. You should meet with Elite Commander Dostya at some point. She's managed to mostly escape the mindset of her distant heritage, and she's a somewhat better Commander than I am if I don't employ Future Sight. In the meantime, I think you should probably let the Psi-Corps shuttle in while we're deporting the prisoners, and call Truman, he'll be happy to confront them."

"How'd you know… never mind, you mentioned some sort of foresight ability." Susan smiled, then activated her comm. "This is Commander Ivanova, Bester can come in, but confine them to the docking bay until Sheridan approves it. Summon Mr. Harold Truman to C&C, we'll pick him up there."

"Acknowledged, Commander." The reply came.

Susan looked across the table at Commander T'Soni "You had this all planned didn't you?"

"We spotted the Psi-Corps shuttle as soon as it arrived with the shuttles coming for the prisoners we took." Commander T'Soni said simply. "And this will be an excellent opportunity to grab some decent secrets out of them, because they were guaranteed to send someone high-ranked who knows lots of things we can use to our advantage. Also, Morden is coming soon, and we'll be ready for him."

* * *

_A Landing Bay, Babylon Five, Local date April 29, 2260, Coalition date April 9, 3872_

Alfred Bester was very annoyed at being forced to wait outside the station for three hours to be allowed in, and then being confined here until that little man Sheridan decided he could leave. Well, at least they didn't blow his shuttle up. He'd tried to scan the two battleships now hanging only ten kilometres from B5, on par with how far the Minbari were from the station. They looked fascinating to his cameras, but that was the best read he could get off of them, because his other sensors weren't detecting anything at all. Trying to scan them for mental emissions felt like ramming headfirst into a very solid wall, complete with the headache but thankfully without his brain splattered across said wall never to rise again. He was a P-12, the highest conventional rating the Psi-Corps had, however the ship had not only been too far to scan fully accurately anyhow but seemed to have some sort of barrier against mental transgressions.

The door finally opened, and seven people plus what seemed to be a large, armoured beast of some sort came into the docking bay. The first woman and the man with her he recognized, but the rest… He gawked stupidly, just like his partner was doing at the moment. _Wow… the briefing didn't exaggerate in the least. It gloriously understated these people._

Okay, so maybe he'd been too stunned by the sheer aesthetics of the incoming people, but it would be incorrect to blame him given how absolutely gorgeous the two humans and even the two alien women with Commander Ivanova were. The only thought he could think of were that these people had obviously done a lot of cosmetic surgery, but still… He resisted the urge to scan them, it would get him booted off the station at best and "accidentally" killed at worst. He felt sure that the hulking armoured brute, staring at him through reptilian eyes and clicking its four toothy mandibles, towering almost two feet over him standing at its full height, would be glad to be rid of him. The armoured beast moving on all fours, watching him through menacing glowing helmet optics also made him feel uneasy. It seemed to be doing something with its wrists, but he couldn't see what, maybe an invisible console? Nah, it was probably just fooling around with nothing like typical pets did.

"Well, Commander Ivanova, I see Sheridan sent his underling and six strangers, plus whatever strange pet he's obtained recently, to meet me after what, four hours?" He leaned down a bit toward Urz's head, staring the Devouring One in the helmet optics and annoying him with the word "pet". The Zerg hissed at him and leaned forward aggressively. It seemed he didn't understand what it meant to die, because he chuckled and looked back to Susan "At least Mr. Garibaldi should have been here to meet me, he was always reliable and at least somewhat consistent. I guess I have to lower myself to meet with you after all." He turned toward the scowling ex-Psi-Corps telepath on the B5 side "Truman, what is wrong with you man, come on home with us and we'll fix you right up."

Harold gave him a two-fingered salute "I would rather die before being enslaved by you fuckers again, Bester."

Susan kept smiling idly, talking to Bester calmly "If you feel like lowering yourself to meet with me, please feel free to prostrate yourself upon the ground, Bester… So, what do you want?"

"I came to meet with the telepaths from those two Coalition battleships, to make sure they're being treated well."

"They're being treated wonderfully, none of them have any complaints." Caprica said with a psychic prompt from Commander T'Soni (only allowed through firewalls because she gave her particular psionic waveform clearance for basic transmissions), stepping forward a bit.

"You are?"

"Technical Specialist Caprica of the Coalition Space Craft _Surveyor_. You and your little puppet dictatorship are interested in us."

Bester felt taken aback. All these people seemed solidly blocked from psychic scans, and the hot blonde in front of him right now seemed to have no psychic signature at all from what he could sense. This was probably why Ivanova had brought them. "Pleased to meet you, technical specialist, but I'm here to meet your telepaths, to make sure they are not being abused by you mind-blind…I mean, normals."

"Our telepaths, I assure you, have no problem whatsoever." The green-haired Coalition ambassador to _Babylon Five_ stepped forward with an air of grace and utter calm about her. "Do you feel that, Mr. Bester?"

He threw up a mental barrier when he felt something vaguely brushing his mind almost nonchalantly. It was then that he checked his barrier and found that there was already a long psychic lance spearing through it into his mind, not yet reading and copying information but clearly capable of it at any moment. He was a P-12, and he couldn't stop the thing… _"Your nightmare… the same sort of nightmare your Corps inflicts on others, is just starting…"_ She spoke to his mind while also saying to him "Do you understand now, Mr. Bester?"

He gasped in abject shock as he realized she was speaking to him physically and mentally at the same time as effortlessly puncturing his wall over and over again with jabs that didn't seem to be wounding his mind. On top of that she was keeping her tunnel into his mind open seemingly effortlessly.

"I'm not human by a long shot. Your nature, your contempt for so-called normals, it is all known to me." His partner's hand twitched for her sidearm and they found themselves staring down a number of weapons barrels, before the green-haired woman waved her hand dismissively "Put them away, you know he can't touch me."

They did as they were told, to Bester's amazement _"I don't have a problem!"_ He mind-yelled back, before saying "My concern is for our people. I protect them from those who would try to destroy us. I came to make sure you and your people were safe, the human telepaths among you. We cannot coexist with normals forever, there will be a reckoning soon. Telepaths, all telepaths, belong with the Corps. We are a family, and the Corps is our mother and father."

She started laughing, then let it simmer down to a chortle before speaking again "Kid, you're beyond saving, most of you are beyond saving, almost everyone who didn't run, at least at one point, is beyond saving. I could crush your puny mind at any moment, your puny mind which is obsessed with exploiting us and our sixth sense."

"I would never consider such a thing." Bester said with such sincerity that a casual observer would have almost immediately believed him.

Commander T'Soni rolled her eyes and said boredly "I recommend you stop lying, my patience is only so long."

"Well… will you tell me a little about the history of your planet?"

"Tell us about telepaths on Earth first." Bester winced internally, this woman was good, she didn't use possessives to reveal if there were multiple planets called Earth…

"Telepaths on Earth began making appearances in large numbers around two hundred years ago. The normal population began to fear us because of our obviously superior nature. So, in order to protect them and us, the Psi-Corps was founded with the purpose of showing the world that we could coexist."

"Incorrect, Mr. Bester." Commander T'Soni was grinning fiendishly now and he suddenly had the impression that her large, pointed ears and the cone-like parts underneath them were like devil's horns "You just said before that we couldn't coexist and that there would be a reckoning soon. Cut the bullshit. Commander, give us the truth. Truman, enjoy the fireworks." _In other words, keep your mouth shut._

Susan was glaring him in the eyes at the moment "You impose your rules on anyone with Psi-abilities whether they want it or not!" She barked. "My mother wasted away because of those suppression drugs you made her take."

"They were for her own good. She couldn't live a normal life if people knew what she was. By her own choice, she refused to come into the family. We could have protected her, loved her, she would have had a wonderful life with her children…"

"But now with her 'normal' husband, he would have disappeared like so many others. Your breeding program would not allow for his continued union with my mother." Susan snarled.

"We don't have a breeding program, but we do believe that people should live with their own kind. It makes for much better conditions all-round." Bester said calmly as if it was the most obvious thing in the universe.

"You make me sick." Susan stated simply, glancing at the Coalition entourage, all of whom had menacing expressions. Even Thel Lodam's society respected intermingling, love, and the idea of new blood enough that if youngsters decided to negotiate agreements among themselves, even those currently bound for arranged marriages, they could be free to do so. This applied as long as it was someone with a _somewhat_ comparable social standing.

Bester grimaced "Despite what the Commander is trying to mislead you with, we are not like that at all." He had a bad feeling about this whole encounter as soon as the green-haired woman standing across from him exaggerated a yawn "I will admit some of our elements, which are being addressed, have in the past been overzealous, but we exist for the enlightenment of all. We offer our services to the telepaths of the Coalition, even if they are not entirely" He looked at the hot blue space chick "or just _not_ human." His eyes returned to the Liaison.

She snorted and shook her head "Dude, I'm a freaking _Gardevoir_, yes, number 282 in the National Pokédex when old Arcy's made those Pokémon games based on the Age of Heroines correctly and put them on our Earth where the Vorlons could copy them and put them on your copied Earth. We are hatched with enough psychic powers to put you guys to shame and our powers only grow as we mature and undergo metamorphoses. We've forgotten more than you have ever learned and have had our powers for eons, yet we coexist with others just fine. You are like a child discovering a mirror for the first time, still thinking of this as a power instead of a sense like sight or hearing. How long would it take for us to Psychic you all into oblivion once we realize you are abusive? Let me tell you, it's under five seconds, because even though our base speed stat i.e. alpha-strike time is not good, it's not horrible enough to take more than five seconds. It would be offensive of us trying to associate with a group which doesn't supply food, doesn't help us preen, doesn't give us the level of healthcare we need to gain strength faster, doesn't have any of the catalysts most of our males use to undergo their alternative final metamorphic route, doesn't offer targets that offer us the EV training we want, doesn't appreciate us, and doesn't lug us around to meet all sorts of novel potential mates."

Bester's face had turned puce as he tried to lash out but instead had the stuffing beat out of his mind as she began tearing information out of him. All of the information was lifted from his mind seemingly in a moment as the world sped up. His brain wasn't devoting as much capacity to consciousness anymore so it felt like everything around him was going faster. The only thing left after the sudden brain drain was total panic at this vast security breach and the look of mild distaste on the woman's face.

He tried to attack both physically and psychically. This was comparable to a caveman using a club against a marine, foolish in the extreme unless first strike was guaranteed. That was what Bester was comparing it to. Unfortunately for him, he was thinking of an entirely wrong class of Marine. His psychic attack did nothing more than get stomped under an enormous psychic… well, the best analogy would be a boot, while his physical lunge was intercepted by a simple sidestep and a sandwiching of his torso with only the palms of both the Thing's (he could no longer bring himself to think of the creature as a person) incredibly pale hands. He could almost swear it had bruised his ribs and torn skin as they stopped him cold, then the Thing grabbed him and lifted him off the ground in a psychic field of some sort. Behind him he could hear Jackie, his partner, gurgling and choking on her own blood, and knew that all was lost, but he couldn't even self-destruct his mind. _How, how did she do this?_

"Mr. Bester, we'd removed your self-destruct mechanisms as soon as you came onboard. It wasn't hard to do it." Urz had been the one to send out the nanites. Thel had moved forward far faster than Jackie could reach her PPG pistol and punched her in the ribs, collapsing one of her lungs and leaving the right side of her chest with a large cave-in. Well, the woman wouldn't be getting up for quite a while, one could almost ignore the crushed mammary glands and the sensitivity of that area…

"They're so fragile…?" Thel said almost in wonder as the woman gurgled and curled up on the floor, drowning in her own blood.

"Did you use your armour servos?" Commander T'Soni said as Caprica and Helena got to work stabilizing the woman's condition by putting her under stasis before preparing to move her to their ship.

"No, no I didn't." He looked at his fist in surprise, maybe there was a reason these humans here were so asymmetric. Lodam hadn't been fully convinced the humans had genetically modified themselves as much as they claimed during their Quantum Age, but now he was inclined to believe it wholeheartedly looking at these locals, who the Coalition humans said were "unmodified". _So that's why Coalition humans are strong enough to hold off Sangheili, at least for a while, in unarmed close combat…_

"Let's get these guys over to the ship, the female needs medical treatment." Commander T'Soni didn't even bother looking at him as she erected a barrier around his mind that prevented him from trying to escape and only hammered any attacks he sent out straight back to him painfully. "This should take only a few hours. Then, Bester, your Psi-Corps will _pay_." She said a silent…prayer? Yes, she supposed it could be called that, for those persecuted by the Psi-Corps. She said it to the spirit of one of her ex-mother-in-law's pre-incarnation's nieces, reciting a few of the lines her aunt-in-law (if a mother-in-law's sister could be called that) in that cycle had said on every single death-day of her daughter's. _Yet on you went and fought and died, in your close and private hell… for life or love or liberty and memories never to tell…_

Commander T'Soni was fully aware and rather bemused at the fact that to one of the incarnations of that cousin-in-law's best friend, her current entire reality was a work of fiction. To him, this reality was compiled from multiple things that had been separate works of fiction in his reality. Then again, she had during her disembodied wanderings had her eyes forcibly opened to the fact that every author with remotely sensible fictions had a universe somewhere where their fiction, in less exaggerated form, was reality. It was a very… hysterical moment for her when she saw all this and realized time did not transfer necessarily between realities. That meant it was possible the guy was receiving some sort of aftershocks of her reality, or he was dictating her reality, or both were acting in synchrony thanks to the Multiverse playing a huge game with all of them. Although, if it was the second choice, then this spawn cycle was likely to be a good one since the kid (relative to her age) had expressed clear intent that all was to end well this time despite every other spawn he'd written of ending horribly ever after.

It was about time too, since the Legendary Commander was sure if her Origin was put through all that BS one more time in this long streak of crappy lives, she'd probably go on strike and be forcibly broken to the Multiverse's will, and when a soul was broken it tended not to go well. The twins were good examples, with how they had been so much weaker than their mates for the past two spawns counting this one. The Multiverse had promised them a vacation-type spawn about three thousand local-objective years ago, then completely failed to deliver. The men had had enough of them all being "Fate's toy", so they stood up for themselves, and got completely wrecked for it. That made sure that neither twin could access any psychic powers despite their inheritance from their father, and hurt them in other ways too.

However, it seemed the Multiverse was finally going to actually let them relax on this one to prevent this crew's Game from breaking down completely if it just destroyed them or replaced their drama with a new crew. Some entities (or rather THE Entity) found playing with the same old toys and arranging them in different ways to be more fun than just randomly fucking around with people's lives, it seemed.

* * *

A/N: Yes, I just punctured the Fourth Wall in a bit of a roundabout way, or is it the Fifth Wall? You shouldn't be that surprised though given the sort of shit I crank out all the time and how Draal supposedly can do that anyway. There's a reason why Lorien's so depressed, he's under the impression that existence is simply that, there is no guiding force, nor is there such a thing as freedom. Plus he needs a few good raps to the head to learn some things about the meaning of life instead of going to the Rim like all the other idiots.

* * *

_Earth, Local date April 29, 2260, Coalition date April 9, 3872_

President Clark's opinion on what was happening could be roughly summed up by _HOLY MOTHERFUCKING SHIT!_ Or, in more polite language, _NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!_ The only noise he made, a high-pitched squeak followed by a soundless scream, could roughly translate to "!"

One could wonder what elicited this from the President. Well, it began on the _Surveyor_… just like all of Clark's other recent troubles seemed to.

The breeding program they'd excavated from the minds of the two Psi-Cops had led to the Grand Crusader agreeing to Commander T'Soni's stony-faced proposition. They were originally going to drug the telepaths to strip away their powers permanently—Psi-suppressing drugs that only dulled Aeon psychics was predicted to permanently strip these people's powers or kill the outright—but this was more sadistic. They would let them keep their powers, sling them at Earth on a shuttle, and then broadcast the truth over every channel in the Andromeda-Sol System at the same time. Clark would no doubt have to pin all the blame on the telepaths and try to purge them, and it would be perfect since the Psi-Corps would cease to exist as a viable organization. Making them hunted for life was a harsher way of dealing with them than merely reformatting their minds or taking away their Psionics.

Harold Truman hadn't been very happy about the idea, citing the young ones born into Psi-Corps and the fact that they'd done nothing wrong. However, when asked for an alternative way to demolish Psi-Corps without making the rest of Earth Force throw themselves at and shatter against the Coalition Andromeda Command's fleet, he'd opened his mouth, closed it, then whispered "You have many more ships here under stealth don't you?" After a shrug from Commander T'Soni, Truman had slumped in his seat "Yes, yes, this is the way that will cost the fewest lives… and when they come here for refuge, we will liberate them from the top ranks, won't we?" He'd stared at them with glumness in his eyes, and they'd nodded. He'd grimly nodded back "Then I'm in agreement." He had smiled "Not like my opinion actually matters, right?"

"Actually, Mr. Truman, it does matter, if you'd staunchly held to the opinion it was a horrible idea, we would probably have gone in with stealth vessels and blown the Psi-Corps facilities up directly. Less collateral damage that way." Xavier had answered with a grimace. Truman had nothing to say to that.

To begin the end of Psi-Corps, the _Surveyor_ quantum-jumped into high Earth orbit under full camouflage and stealth, so the EA ships didn't even register the soft glow as it jumped in. They slung the Psi-Corps shuttle with the two Psi-Cops inside at the planet, giving them the helm ten seconds after it departed the _Surveyor_. By then the ship had already jumped away after a broadcast of "We would like to return two of your Psi-Cops to you, they are on that shuttle". The jump resulted in Earth Alliance warships reluctantly going back to their stations from which they'd just begun to move.

The broadcast itself from all the ships and drones in the system had consisted of "Hello again, this is Grand Crusader Xavier Fran of the Coalition of Species Andromeda Command if you've forgotten me already. Now, people of Earth Alliance, you may be interested in knowing that not only was your President responsible for the assassination of President Santiago because he wanted more control over every man, woman and child, he is also using Psi-Corps to indoctrinate people to do his bidding. A majority of Psi-Corps itself is brainwashed, and you would all do well to remember that segregation only brings hostility and hatred. The Psi-Corps hates you non-telepaths because you hate them, and they terrorize you because it suits them to create an air of terror and fear. They kidnap young telepaths, often killing their families, put them into concentration camps, and force them into training. Most do not survive or go insane as a result and are killed. Psi-Corps is spread throughout your military brainwashing important members into submission to President Clark, but he knows well that they have their own agenda, don't you, Mr. Clark? If you don't, we'll be more than happy to enlighten you, you see…"

Xavier continued on, telling everyone about the breeding program in Psi-Corps and how they brainwashed the recruits, plus all of Psi-Corps' plans for domination. He spoke of the thousands of murdered spouses and lovers of telepaths and how those not willing to give up their families in the past were forced to take drugs that would drive them insane in the end. He talked about how this option was no longer given and telepaths were brought in by force or killed. He spoke of numerous major incidents that were perpetrated by Psi-Corps under Clark's orders. He made it very clear that it was both the Corps and Clark that were responsible for every one of these.

In the end the President was left with absolutely no choice other than to pin all the blames on the telepaths and purge Psi-Corps immediately if he didn't want an imminent revolution on his hands. Most of the Earth Alliance's ships were already not bothering to listen to him half the time and were guarding the colonies, but if the ships over Earth turned on him… he couldn't afford to lose the control he'd done all sorts of things to gain. He would never give up the control, the power, to anyone…

* * *

A/N: Review Replies!

**Just a Crazy-Man**: Probably not.

**DaLintyMan**: That sounds reasonable. I wasn't sure what you meant by allied ships, because boarding actions on Coalition ships are basically impossible when structural fields are up and they don't want you to come in. Doesn't sound like too terrible of an idea… wait, don't they have Combat Drones already (Quarian-Tali, Current-James, I'm looking at you)? They're only remotely useful in small spaces. Out in the open… ACU warfare rules the day. As for Zerg/Minorities, it just so happens I was gonna use them here anyways.

**KleverKilva (Ch 9 & 10)**: Forgot to say this, but you didn't help the selling chances of Star Trek as an Equal Civilization or even as a fandom when you gave me those numbers. They border on the absurdity of Warhammer 40K. Who the hell would bother living on planets then? Ships are much more survivable… And yes, the showdown line-ups on all sides will be quite interesting. You might want to see Spacebar's review on Ch 10 for Star Trek tech manual numbers, which are nowhere near what you said.

**Nenfaer**: I did also say that Quarnon Cannons were the phased counterpart to Medium Oblivion Cannons back in SupCom ME 2, I think. However, Coalition shielding and hull plating ARE multi-phasic in nature (a demand brought on in large part from the original Seraphim Conflict) which has the side effect that Ghost-types actually need an airlock or door to get in instead of phasing in. Your other concerns will be covered.

**Spacebar**: _FUCK The Orchard Music, The Harry Fox Agency, Inc. (HFA) and EMI for blocking Flail Supreme 2 on YouTube. (Still watched, not nearly as awesome as Angel Supreme IMHO)_ I think I explained the twins' problem enough for now. Crew members on these reality-saving crews also occasionally switch around between spawns in terms of war machine vs. helplessness e.g. Kelly, Jedore, etc. Thanks for the G'Kar note (never watched B5 so I need advisors) although she never tried to tell him that the Vorlons are completely wrong, just that some parts of their philosophy need not be accepted blindly. Photon torpedoes equal 43 Megatons of TNT each then (2 kg of mass used up)… and the shaped blast is due to sheer speed (although at that sort of speed we can probably multiply the yield by about 1.4 or something to get 60 MT per shot, more reasonable than the "isoton" which is not a real unit, yields KleverKilva gave me). I always thought Phasers were short for "Phased Lasers" which is the context I'm using them in for this story (when I refer to Ultrachromatic Beam Generators as "basically Phasers"). Thanks for the information. The only flaw in your proposal of Star Trek is that the Andromeda Galaxy (Coalition designation) is going to, ASSUMING I write anything into that area beyond Vorlon/Shadow space, host the Star Wars galaxy (Vorlon Storm Generators = Hyperspace unstable in Unknown Regions). Note that this is looking highly unlikely ATM. However, go take a look at the Local Group on Wikipedia, I haven't used Triangulum yet. Therefore, maybe I'll write something along those lines about 10 years down the road, though explaining where all the humanoids came from could be a pain (Lorien's old friends—all gone now—screwing around with later sentient races maybe?)

**QUESTIONS/SUGGESTIONS?** SPEAK IN A REVIEW!


	12. Words With the Elders

A/N: Yeah, having the Multiverse crush your soul into obedience tends to obliterate any spiritual powers or dependent abilities (Psionics of any sort, aka magic, biotics, telepathy, etc.) you may have had beforehand. This is why the boys are so weak in this cycle and the immediately previous one (they were Pokémon Trainers, aka chefs, first-aid kits, pack mules, transports, etc.)

The Coalition is merciful enough not to want to crush some species (read: Batarians) like the bugs they are (I read a few more Colonist/Ruthless fics). However, Commander T'Soni and, in my other fanfic series, the Shepard Sisters, are not nearly so paragon.

* * *

Chapter 12: Words With the Elders

_Babylon Five, Local date April 30, 2260, Coalition date April 10, 3872_

"Well, Psi-Corps is being hunted down like rabid animals." Sheridan commented, looking at the reports that had been coming in and the ISN broadcast on the progress of the purging.

"Our friends really get the job done, huh?" Ivanova was almost as glum "The giant signs they put up all over the Internet, blanketing almost every damned website, telling the telepaths to come to _Babylon Five_ if they want asylum seems to not be bringing in too much though, probably because of the blockade." Both were wondering the same thing, were the signs put up on websites just to piss Psi-Corps off and make the stupider ones get blown up by Earth Force?

"The bombardments of the Psi-Corps bases seemed a bit… fast for Earth Alliance though." Sheridan raised one eyebrow at his second-in-command as he spoke of the reports he'd gotten "And the radiation profiles of the thermonuclear detonations are far too clean, almost negligible. I think we need to ask our friends some questions. It's kind of obvious what and why they did it, but I just want to get their side… Corwin, get the _Surveyor_ on the line."

"Communications to _Surveyor_ are open." Lieutenant Corwin replied after a couple moments.

"Did you bomb the Psi-Corps bases?" Sheridan asked a chipper-looking Xavier Fran.

The Grand Crusader nodded "Yep, kill the high-ranking ones meeting to discuss how to react, thinking the Earth Alliance couldn't act fast enough, and the lower ranks have an easier time running away instead of being rounded up for use as cannon fodder."

Sheridan nodded "Best reason possible, I suppose."

"Glad you approve."

"By the way, Mr. Morden has come onboard the station, has the Liaison been alerted to this fact yet?" Ivanova asked Xavier.

"She knows he is coming, and she is planning on being as obnoxious and annoying as possible." Xavier smiled.

Ivanova gaped while Sheridan questioned "Is she insane? We don't have a large enough fleet gathered to resist them if she manages to piss the Shadows off enough…"

"Their curiosity will hold their hand, and even if they don't, and send their followers, and they will because they want to know more about us before moving themselves, we have enough firepower accumulated now ready to jump in that we will still smash their faces in." Xavier stated.

Ivanova pinched the bridge of her nose as Sheridan raised an eyebrow. "Well, if you're not going to call her and talk to her about this, I will." She picked up the comms and dialled the Liaison's office.

* * *

_Coalition Liaison's Office, Babylon Five, Local date April 30, 2260, Coalition date April 10, 3872_

Her door opened an instant before the chime rang. The dark-haired man wearing a cool smile outside her door blinked once in surprise before speaking "Hello, Liaison T'Soni? My name is Morden. I represent a group of associates that are very interested in forming a working relationship with you and the other Coalition representatives. It would be very lucrative, very beneficial for all concerned. May I come in?"

Commander T'Soni tracked the targets with her mind as they phased through her room's walls like Ghost-types could, although she registered no bio-electric fields at all from them. The man in front of her was full of their taint "I'm sorry, Mr. Morden, but there is nothing you can offer me."

"Well, there have been certain, er, misunderstandings between you and the Earth Alliance Government. My associates and I can mediate a truce between your two respected groups and cease this unnecessary conflict."

"You don't get it, do you? The only misunderstanding is their incomprehension of the might we can bring to bear on them if they piss us off enough. Good-bye."

"Is there anything personally that you want?" Morden yelled through the door at her as the Shadows, finding nothing unusual in her office, left through the walls.

"No. Go away!" _They are far outside your abilities, Mr. Morden… Life, Love, Liberty, and memories never to tell… even that last one, the easiest one, is far outside your reach._

She heard him walk off before the comm. terminal pinged suddenly behind the Legendary Commander. She picked up.

"Did you confront Mr. Morden and his shadow associates?"

"I blew him off less than half a minute ago." Susan's video feed showed her head-desking and groaning while Sheridan sighed before Liara clarified "I decided making them wonder about us was more convenient for B5 than not doing so." _And much more rewarding in the long run. In other reasons, we haven't gotten enough capital ships on-hand yet to decisively crush a major attack they could send if they do it themselves, unless we pop the lid on the _Ascendant Justice_. Only four hundred assorted warships… we should have kept the gantries rolling, we need to get them rolling and keep them working full-time from this point forth. Bringing out the Super Carrier will only end up making half the locals piss themselves in terror and will not facilitate progress and strength in this sector._ "In the meantime, how is the work on the station morale project going?"

"Still wish you'd tell us where you're getting all those supplies that you're selling into the market, but I'm pretty sure it's by legitimate means. The quality of the mechanical components you're freely giving us is remarkable…" Sheridan commented, thinking bitterly about the rumours being spread by the criminal elements about the food being poisoned. The rumours weren't doing too well with how no one had died (although a couple people had allergies), but they had still had to crush several underworld gangs in Down-Below.

"We are obtaining the supplies by perfectly legitimate means. What do you think most of the extra space inside our ships is used for?" Commander T'Soni stated.

"But there's only two… never mind." Susan realized she had spoken without thinking and shut up, knowing full well that there were more Coalition ships out there under stealth, and their agricultural facilities could produce food on the magnitudes they were seeing.

In fact, full-scale food crop growth had begun as soon as the Coalition arrived at B5, and now the first batches were being harvested. More would be coming in the future, but solving the immediate supply shortage of staple foods was sufficient for the moment."Hold on, someone's knocking." She went to get the door.

"Good day, Liaison, may I come in?" Londo asked courteously despite looking as glum as physically possible.

"Certainly Ambassador Mollari, by the look on your face, it is decisively not good news that you come with."

"No, and I believe the Captain and Commander should know of this too." Londo said grimly "Lord Refa has persuaded the Emperor to launch an attack sometime in the relatively near future on the Coalition warships at B5. He claims you skirted Centauri territory on your way to B5 and plans on using that as his excuse."

Xavier's hologram rolled his eyes "As if they could spot us unless we expressly let them, and we didn't let them. Couldn't they have gotten a better excuse?"

"Well, now you know of this, you can be ready when they come, and they will come." Londo grimaced.

After he left, the group listened to Morden confronting him outside and learned that Londo had previously asked something of the Shadows. Other than that, nothing new was gained. "I may have to ask Kosh for help if the Shadows' warmongering continues on for much longer." Sheridan stated.

"Yes, if we are not ready by then, then asking Kosh for help would be a good way to buy us all even more time." Commander T'Soni said.

After the conversation ended, she opened a channel directly to the _Surveyor_. "Xavier, crank production to full capacity again. We need a fleet, a real fleet."

* * *

_Near Coalition Liaison's Office, Babylon Five, Local date May 20, 2260, Coalition date April 30, 3872_

Twenty days had elapsed since the Coalition's first brush with the Shadows, and as of last week reports had come in of Shadow warships attacking openly, but the Minbari seemed to be doing nothing to help the younger races… Oh, and the Coalition Ship Gantry parked near B5 had disappeared from all sensors, but it was clear it was still there because the Surveyor had put up buoys claiming a small section of space as occupied. No one tried to violate that space.

In those twenty days, the seventy-five Ship Gantries had cranked out twenty-eight ships each, a total of 2100 warships of assorted classes, raising their total fleet strength up to twenty-five hundred warships. This was the true power of the Coalition, the power of sheer quantity of production.

But right now, John Sheridan, blissfully unaware of the great fleet scattered in space all around the Epsilon Eridani system was talking to Kosh Naranek, Vorlon Ambassador to _Babylon Five_. Kosh was getting agitated and angry that Sheridan was standing up to him with regards to the younger races needing help and a sign of action from the Vorlons so that they could find courage to join the alliance being established at B5. He was yelling at Kosh by this point in the argument. "You want to kill me? Well, you'll have to because I'm not leaving otherwise. We have nothing to lose. Unless you get off your encounter-suited asses and DO SOMETHING we're all going to die anyways. The Minbari can't protect _Babylon Five_ forever. The Alliance is falling apart at the edges due to fear and uncertainty. Those Coalition ships are a two-edged sword and we have as much idea what their so-called Ship Gantry is doing as where the Vorlon homeworld is. They're helping us greatly, yes, replenishing the station's stores almost for free, but many of the governments around here, probably including some Minbari factions, may attack us just to get their hands on the Coalition's technology. We only need a small victory, something to show that the mighty Vorlon Empire is moving to aid us so that we may have time to rally ourselves. If I need to die to balance your books, then so be it."

"It is not time, but…" Kosh heaved his race's equivalent of a sigh "I will do as you suggest, but there is a price."

John snorted "There always is."

"I will not be there to help you when you go to Z'ha'dum'."

Sheridan shrugged, his apathy surprising himself "Okay then, I'll go alone and I will die."

"You will… now." Kosh sounded a bit grim.

"I thought better of you, Kosh, I thought…" Sheridan squared his jaw and made up his mind to go call the Grand Crusader next if that was what it would take to secure help without having the Vorlon, who he considered a friend, pay the price. "Withhold your help then. There are others who would aid us."

_There shouldn't have been._ Kosh thought to himself, but outwardly he merely said "You do not understand, but you will." He headed off absently, in the opposite direction from his quarters, thinking… _They should not be here, they were never here…_

Sheridan sighed, then proceeded toward C&C. As soon as he was out of earshot, Commander T'Soni de-cloaked and de-stealthed some ten metres behind Kosh, greeting him with "Good day, Ambassador."

At the time, he had been communicating his request to the other Vorlons. They knew that the heavy destroyers and planet-killers were not ready in adequate numbers to withstand a full-scale Shadow offensive, but all knew the Shadows did not know this. They knew the price, but they all agreed that this was the right thing to do. The lesser races entrusted to their care needed a victory, and they needed it now, or all would be lost. It would also buy the Vorlons valuable time to mature their ships. If he hadn't been almost too distracted by communicating with his fellow Vorlons, Kosh would likely have jumped enough from the startling greeting for his encounter suit to encounter the ceiling. He had gone out of his way to avoid the unfamiliar alien. It wasn't that unusual to the casual observer since he rarely met with other ambassadors on _B5_ anyway, but these people were a special case. These creatures had not been genetically programmed like races for seven thousand light-years around had been to have an instinctive awe of his people.

None of the alien races on their ships, on the rare occasions that they actually came to B5, matched computer records, although the blue humanoid female was identified as being closely related to humans, perhaps close enough to be a sub-species. The large, hulking reptilian (identified as "Sangheili") and the smaller humanoid reptilian (the doctor identified as Drell) had some genetic sequences similar to those of the Narn, so perhaps they contributed some material to the original engineering of the Narn as a race almost a million years ago by that other alien vessel? These people weren't in any of the ancient records gleaned form _Babylon Four_… So much was uncertain now that these people had arrived, so much unknown… the fact that something about this woman reminded him of his own people didn't help either.

The humming chatter from the other end of the connection to the rest of the Vorlon race at once became a thunderous roar upon him turning to see the woman, if she could be called that. Some of the youngsters and a very few of the older ones were proverbially clamouring over each other to get closer looks at the data he was feeding them. Most of the Vorlon collective however balked at this change to the known, to the Cycle that had to be maintained lest the fabric of reality unravel. Kosh did the only thing he could to prevent himself from getting the equivalent of a migraine from the sheer amount of noise of all the minds yelling at once.

He activated the mute function in his mind.

"You should not be here, you were never here." His translator said after a brief delay.

"Time travel isn't that hard to fuck around with." The woman said simply.

Kosh's iris dilated in total shock "Explain." He was now _really_ glad he'd pushed the mute button on incoming transmissions from the rest of his race.

"Come with me to my office, it would be inconvenient for the future should others hear us." She moved off, her dress almost brushing the floor.

Kosh followed "Past, not future."

"Future, I shall explain once we are safe."

Kosh snorted in his mind, _As if these youngsters could build anything truly safe from the hunters of the dark…_ "So be it."

Once they were in the Liaison's office, she turned to him "Future because the past is known, fixed, and the Shadows cannot change it no matter how hard we try. But they can change the future."

He spoke again after a moment of contemplation "Why did you come? You are not from here."

She grinned savagely "Neither are you Vorlons."

Kosh emitted an unbelieving hissing noise like a steam engine "We were always here."

"That's what you'd like to believe."

"Explain."

"Your homeworld is elsewhere, you came as refugees fleeing from a war you were losing."

The Vorlon collective decided to stop the link because bullshit, while occasionally amusing, was not worth paying much attention to. Kosh was almost grateful, because he had a feeling this woman knew things that would scare any self-respecting Vorlon so much they wouldn't even want to think about it. "Who told you such lies?"

"How I came across the information is at this point in time irrelevant. The question is, why are you still hiding yourselves? You don't need the translator except to seem mysterious and frightening. The encounter suit is simply to hide you from the eyes of others which can tell whether you are happy or sad, sick or healthy. You are hiding yourselves all the time. Do you need help? And I don't mean physical necessarily, I think you guys need psychiatric help."

Part of Kosh was thinking _Help from your Coalition? How arrogant the Humans this creature represents are… they are less than dust in the wind, they can help me about as much as they can stop the wind from blowing._ However part of him was not so sure, so he settled on "The circle will not complete itself. You must go."

She waved dismissively at him "It is not possible to deny a time loop, once it exists, it will exist. It is what happens when forces vastly beyond even The First" Kosh mentally blinked, did she just speak of Lorien? What was her connection, if any, to the old one? "decide to fuck around with reality. We may never have been mentioned in your thousand-year-old records brought back in time from the near future or possibly present, but have you considered that the records could have been edited before they were sent back, just to fit the records you gleaned from time travel in the first place? Now that we are here, the future you learnt of in the past has been revealed to be a lie that maintained the past in the first place. Now you have heard the truth about your circle, Ambassador. Whether you accept reality or refuse to understand is your choice. The Vorlons are so deep into this eons-old dispute with the Shadows that you don't know what to do and so are trying to maintain your image of being aloof and mysterious. I am telling you right how that it will backfire on you."

Kosh was trying to scrutinize this woman closer than he had before. Something seemed to block him from doing a psychic scan of any sort and his suit sensors were also unable to penetrate her exterior. She seemed full of outrageous ideas that made perfect sense once one thought about them, and was incredibly perceptive. Her people's technology had radically deviated from the accepted norms, just that alone could potentially shift the balance of the war decisively in the Vorlons' favour. These people could be useful, but first they had to be properly moulded. "Who are you?" The question of the ages, everything began, after all, with understanding of the self.

Commander T'Soni smirked a bit wider than any human could comfortably have and Kosh had a transient feeling of being prey under the scrutiny of a predator before she said slowly, relishing every word. "I?" _He's not going to get the reference but that's irrelevant. After all, he himself tells Sheridan confusing truths all the time._ "I am a monument to all your sins…" The sad thing was that she was being perfectly honest, but he could not know everything yet, or he'd probably overreact and get them all into trouble. "Now that the general truth has been told in an enigmatic way, something which you yourself like to do so often, we can get working on the details. My species classification would be a Gardevoir in English and a number of other names in other human languages." She would edit a few facts about soul replication/division and such out to make this more understandable to Kosh "I left my homeworld a bit over nine hundred years ago to make sure my reincarnation could have a better life than I did, fulfilling a time loop along the way. However, I am still not quite sure who I am, despite having a LOT of subjective time to think about it. Only people who are very special to me get to share my experiences on the path of self-discovery, Kosh of Vorlon, so don't press. The real question is, who are you? Or rather, who do you believe yourself to be? It is so easy for old ones like you to believe they know the answer to the first question but in reality miss the point and answer the second instead." She let a little bit of her power seep out of her physical form at that to serve as a hint to Kosh.

Kosh still ramrod-straight and completely still, the gears practically clanking away inside his head as he stared at this being who had told him enough for him to know that she was far more than just another generic humanoid. It almost felt similar to looking at a First One in a way, complete with the power she radiated. He could only ask himself who these people really were, and who was Liaison T'Soni in relation to them? Could they possibly help? _More importantly, what does she know of the ancient history of the Vorlons? We must learn this, for it would help us answer the question of who _we_ are…_

* * *

_CSC Surveyor, Local date May 22, 2260, Coalition date May 2, 3872_

They were beginning to get concerned that there was no news from home yet, no information on how the construction of the network stretching between the two largest galaxies of the Local Group was going. However, their instructions had said that they shouldn't be very concerned unless it took over three months to get the link up and running. The last two and a half days had seen the gantries crank out another three warships each to bring the total fleet strength up to 2725 vessels organized into five battle groups plus the 225 relatively new ships awaiting the assembly of more companions. The Vorlons were about to enter the fray and that meant this sector's war was about to erupt into large-scale combat. They needed the ships, and they needed them right away.

Sheridan commented as the footage neared its end "Well, the Shadows are running for it." They were watching the footage of a Vorlon fleet battling a Shadow raiding group, which had begun to try to flee from the superior Vorlon forces. The Coalition party was seeing Shadow Battle-Crabs for the first time, and they were not very impressed.

"Opinions?" Xavier said to his crew.

"The Shadows' use of living telepaths as CPUs on their ships results in them being relatively easy to surprise when their attention is focused on something. Why didn't they just grow their own CPUs? The ships are clearly alive…" Commander T'Soni spouted. "Unless it's not their own technology and they stole it from someone else, or was given it by someone else?" She suddenly changed tracks "Are we sending the footage to Earth Alliance too?"

"I think we should." Sheridan said. "I think you're thinking the same. And you're probably right on the technology possibly not being theirs to begin with, or something else preventing them from using just self-grown combat intelligences."

Liara shrugged since she herself had no idea about the second point, if Shadow ships could pilot themselves to Z'ha'dum' on autopilot, that autopilot should be good enough to handle combat. _Unless something interferes with it, perhaps a Vorlon weapon, and that's why they use living telepaths to try to resist the interference long enough to get a battle done and over with? Perhaps it's a stopgap solution for now while they try to devise something better? But perhaps the interference targets standard Shadow genetic markers that make the Shadow ships not try to use their immune systems on the cells with the marker? If that's the case, then you can't install something resistant to the interference for the long term, or the ship would react negatively to it. Perhaps they can tolerate brief, non-aggressive intrusions and that's how they plug in the telepaths?_

She answered Sheridan as she thought, subconsciously engaging her mental abilities to see the future in a way that directed her thinking toward the rough-hewn version of the truth. "Yep, information to serve as bait." There were after all reasons why they'd let the EA warships escape with telemetry data from the battle at B5 and even recover black boxes from the wrecked ships—at least the black boxes that were still intact and functional—but didn't give them even a scrap of extra information from their second battle. The broadside-roll was irrelevant to Earth Alliance because their ships just weren't nimble enough to do it in any reasonable amount of time, or would end up centrifuging their crew around if they tried, due to lack of real artificial gravity. They'd left their camouflage and stealth off to deliver a glaring message of "don't fuck with us" and also to make the EA think that stealth wasn't their default operating configuration.

* * *

A/N: **Nenfaer**, did I answer most of your Ch 10 review's questions?

* * *

"Alternative hypothesis is that the Shadows didn't expect the Vorlons to actually attack them." Xavier put in.

"Possible, perhaps probable, Shadows well-known for surprise strikes so would usually be wary of the same stunt being pulled on them…" The Legendary Commander frowned "I sounded like Mordin…"

"Who?" Xavier frowned.

"A friend and squad-mate of your sons, not an issue at present. He liked to talk in slightly awkward-sounding sentences when speaking English. Anyhow, I need to go protect Kosh. See you guys later."

"Why does Kosh need your protection?" Sheridan asked as he watched Commander T'Soni's hologram pull on a few accessories, including a red and white device on her left forearm and a pair of… black-rimmed glasses?

"The Shadows will try to get revenge for the rout of their raiding group. They will target Kosh. We will defend him." Liara said absently as she adjusted the fit of the "Wise Glasses", calibrating it and the extra data-feeds it was giving her. The information didn't get direct-fed into her Spec Attack field harmonic like it normally would have (and was, as a battle item, designed to). Instead it went into targeting through a roundabout route, although it wouldn't have worked against other Pokémon, she was confident it could work well enough against these Shadows. She didn't enjoy using Coalition hardware for similar work, since it had a tendency to get pushed outside her bio-electric fields and then get wrecked when she wore it into combat. The only reason she put this on was in hopes of being able to take down a Shadow _WITHOUT_ killing it.

Sheridan's frown had become somewhere between enraged and alarmed "Station Security forces—"

"Would suffer casualties if they were to try to handle the situation, and would not save Kosh. It's time to change destiny from the path it would have taken, John Sheridan. Remember, if the records sent back with Babylon Four were edited to never mention us, temporal continuity would not be a problem." Commander T'Soni's hologram finished prepping her hardware, including inserting several objects into the launcher-like device strapped on her white-clad thigh. "Also, don't seal off the station, the Shadows will just attack it if you seal their agents. By deflecting attention from Kosh to ourselves, we're hoping to draw the flak as well."

"I don't like you plan, but I suppose it's the best we can do without drawing the Shadows to wreck B5. Be careful out there…" Sheridan sounded annoyed.

"Don't worry, Sheridan"

"That thing's on your leg backwards…" Sheridan commented, looking at the yellow arrow on one end of the device, presuming the arrow pointed to where the objects she'd loaded would launch.

"The items in it are for myself, hence it's pointed at me." Liara explained "Now I really need to get moving if I want to make this seem nonchalant to the Shadows instead of a blatant rescue." She suspected they'd be transmitting to the Collective until she entered the fray and shut off their connection, so her presence had to seem coincidental at least at the beginning.

"Good luck, Commander." Xavier saluted her.

"Try not to breach any walls, or failing that, don't hole the hull, please?" Sheridan said, thinking of what Susan had told him about the woman's firepower.

"No problem." She might not have very many Physical moves that she could use with reasonable re-calibration and re-fire rate (i.e. were in her combat move-set), but her only Ice-type move was still well within reach. Ideally, these Shadows wouldn't mind a taste of negative energy too much (i.e. it would kill them in a single hit).

* * *

_Kosh's Quarters, Babylon Five, Local date May 22, 2260, Coalition date May 2, 3872_

Kosh was pacing in his quarters, geared up for the fight of/for his life. It could not be long now. A knock at the door surprised him, he waited a bit and the guest knocked again. A glance at the aura involved said it was the Coalition liaison. "Go. It is not safe for you here."

"Kosh, it's not safe for YOU to be here, and once I come in to chat, it won't be safe for the Shadows if they decide to come here. I thought we'd gone over this yesterday?"

Kosh let out a hissing sigh "Well, I have warned you repeatedly…" He said as he opened the door.

"Fun place." Commander T'Soni commented dryly as she freely breathed the atmosphere that would be poisonous to a local human and mildly irritating to a Coalition human. "I'd love to visit your homeworld one day, see if it's as comfortable as these quarters."

Kosh blinked his helmet's iris in reply, having grown so used to the younger races' relatively shared body language aspects over the past years that he found this a convenient way to express somewhere between exasperation and surprise. Surely, with all that she hinted at knowing and all she did know, she understood that the Homeworld was off-limits unless one was specifically invited? "Not possible." While he wouldn't necessarily mind it, the vast majority of the Vorlon populace held opinions to the… er… contrary. Just the way she randomly changed subjects would probably annoy them into being confrontational.

"Anything is possible, no matter how improbable. Look at this place and all the little plots and intrigue that swarm over it every day. It survived this long because of the fact that Humans don't give up, they never give up." _And it's pathetic to see so many derived races wanting to give up to one degree or another mostly due to Vorlon interference…_ Her mind said to itself. "You may think they blunder onward chaotically, but isn't this thing they built, this unity and the strength that comes with it, the antithesis of the Shadow concept that chaos and conflict brings strength?"

Kosh had the air of a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar of thoughts for a moment before he slumped a bit and said all he really could say to her "One day, perhaps…" He noticed her frown, but it wasn't directed at him. He understood in a mere moment as he sensed the stench of Shadow minds and bodies outside his door, trying to hack through the firewalls to open it and get into his room. "Get behind me, now!" He barked at her as he advanced a little and took up a combative position. Yes, in the open they could have an easier time outflanking him, but he also had a bit more manoeuvring room.

Four intruders charged into the room after the door slammed open. Kosh knew the Shadows were only interested in him, but Morden wouldn't leave any living witnesses. He hoped the Liaison could take care of herself enough to survive and escape…

The Shadows charging through the door aimed for the Vorlon while ignoring the green-haired, alabaster-skinned woman in the room. Morden watched as they began tearing into Kosh, sharpened, reinforced claws tearing into and through Kosh's encounter suit materials into Vorlon flesh. Yes, both sides were technically at least in part Ascended beings, but their energies were both still tied to the flesh, and if that flesh was destroyed, their energies would dissipate into wherever the dead went. Kosh slugged one of the Shadows hard enough to break a limb, but more limbs struck at him than he had to strike back with. Morden rejoiced at the prospect of seeing the Vorlon slain, but then remembered the very pale green-haired woman hovering near Kosh but not quite near enough to be in the way of the Shadows. She was a real beauty and it would be a shame to kill her, but he couldn't leave witnesses. He began moving toward her just before one of the Shadows decided to do it themselves.

The Second of Three, as he answered to, received a nasty surprise as soon as he turned toward the green-haired woman in the form of a smash down to the forehead by a softly glowing fist. That blow sent a growing negative enthalpy bubble down through the Shadow's torso, solidifying his flesh and practically freezing him solid in an instant before the shockwave portion of the blast hit and shattered the pieces of frozen carapace and flesh all over the now somewhat cracked (from sudden temperature stress) floor. The air temperature in the room had dropped drastically almost instantly, ice crystals falling out of the air in the moments after the strike because they hadn't even had time to nucleate and grow on the ground or on dust in the air.

The rest of the Shadow's remains was also freezing solid as heat was drained from the flesh by the expanding bubble that left visible traces in the air _after_ it passed, such was the extent of the super-cooling and the speed of the bubble. There hadn't even been enough time for the creature to let out a death scream. The other two, sporting some minor injuries each, abandoned the moderately wounded Vorlon and charged her while her bio-electric fields were still re-equilibrating. They slashed at her with all their claws at once. She reached upward as some of the appendages came down while the others tried to pincer her, and caught one of each of the Shadows' claws while the other limbs glanced off her fields.

"Sorry, no can do." She smiled as she held her ground under a hail of clawing attempts until she was ready to deploy another strike, then grabbed both with Psychic, trying her best to tone down the force used in the attack. One of them, squeezed far harder, imploded, then exploded as she popped the controlled bubble—too late to spare the Shadow's life—in a fine mist of pulverized flesh. The other merely screamed in pain as energy lashed it from every direction at once. The ooze from the pulverized one coated the floor, walls and ceiling of Kosh's room with how it had splattered and begun to solidify in mere moments due to how the room's temperature now hovered around minus twenty degrees Celsius even with the thermal contribution from Kosh leaking energy from his wounds and the Shadow's remains. There were a few areas shielded from the splatter by objects, leaving ominous outlines on the walls like the aftermath of a nuclear blast leaving the silhouettes of people and objects on walls.

The last Shadow was curled up on the floor in a pained, twitching ball and staring in abject shock, though it was less shock than Kosh seemed to be showing as he wiped off his suit iris absently with a Shadow-gore-stained part of his encounter suit's robe. Morden also wiped off his face only to continue staring. "No fields, huh, so you can't be Dark-type… too bad for you then." She murmured as if to herself. _Fuck, I should have just used basic telekinesis instead of an actual attack… and I WAY overdid it with the full-powered Ice Punch._

The first noise among the four was, surprisingly, from Morden. He squeaked in terror at a pitch that neared the limits of Gardevoir hearing (thanks to Shadow modifications, he could do this) and somewhat beyond the limits of human hearing. He tried to run, but the Commander had already put him in a psychic hold "You listen to me, Mr. Morden. You tell your Shadow masters that Ambassador Kosh is under the protection of the Coalition of Species. Oh, and feel free to get them to bring someone to pick up this one when you agree to let the matter of the wrecked raiding group go." She mentally stopped the angry Shadow from moving with simple telekinesis as Morden nodded dumbly "Go, now." He turned and left after a series of noises from his sole surviving master. "Sorry you had to find out like this, Kosh."

"Are you… a First One?" The Shadow hissed at her mentally.

Commander T'Soni shrugged "Hell no, and it doesn't matter anyway. I'm not very good with my punches or direct telekinetic attacks in terms of raw yield. And no, the hold I have you in right now is not an attack. As long as your retrieval ship comes in peace, you live, if not, well…" If she hadn't used such fine control the energy pulses into the Psychic-contained fields would have been much larger. "I'm always up to more target practice."

The Shadow knew a presently insurmountable situation when it met one, or rather was beaten down by one, and so for now it would submit. But these Coalition creatures would regret treating her this way, they would regret imprisoning a being that walked the stars like a god before they had discovered a purpose for the wheel. _Three Battle-Crabs ought to do it even if that bigger battleships is still here and the cordoned area isn't a ruse…_ she thought and transmitted to the rest of the Shadows as their enemies called them. Her beacon would serve as targeting data if need be. They agreed. Three nearby Battle-Crabs were vectored to rendezvous and attack these impertinent creatures and the hated Vorlon once they were on the "Coalition" ship.

"I'm going to try to treat your injuries, alright?" The Liaison walked across the stained floor—leaving no footprints, Kosh noticed—and the Vorlon nodded mutely, curious to see what other tricks this woman could pull. There was no reason for her to harm him now, because she could have let the Shadows do the job earlier, so he felt he could trust her to do this. She frowned, deep in thought, for about ten seconds after he'd agreed and after she'd begun adjusting her energy profile "There. Give it about seven or eight seconds to work."

Kosh didn't notice anything, and he was going to say so before he felt the energy leakage come to a halt as the torn tissues seemed to just get knit together by some sort of force "What?"

"Using a move not in one's nominal move-set takes a very long time, because I have to dredge it up from memory since my health-restoring items wouldn't work on you. That move was called 'Wish' back on my homeworld."

Both Vorlon and Shadow gaped at her for a few moments before, surprisingly, sharing a look as both tried to make sure they hadn't been hallucinating.

"Come, Kosh, we need to get you some more medical care." She said casually as she levitated the Shadow in front of her, walking down the hallways that led to the bay where the Coalition "shuttle" was docked. Kosh followed, deep in thought and focusing most of his energy on patching up his wounds. "Our doctor will take care of you," She turned her gaze to the nearly spitting Shadow "but you on the other hand… you'll be in my care until your compatriots come to pick you up."

"You will burn for this crime, impertinent youngling!" The Shadow snarled mentally.

"I'd like to see you try." T'Soni responded as they approached the Gemini.

* * *

A/N: REVIEW REPLY TIME!

**Legionary Prime**: Good luck catching up. You'll need it.

**DaLintyMan**: I already said that they have combat drones for their Engineer-class infantry. We'll see what I can do with the drones…

**KleverKilva**: The Multiverse can be a dick, but at the moment it's not feeling like enough of a dick to allow a temporal cold war of any sort. People only use time travel if they've already thought of it in the past of their time-travelled self but in their current future. In other words, if the Multiverse doesn't want you to time-travel, you won't even think of using it because no time loop would exist for you to have used it in anyway.

**Spacebar**: Commander T'Soni is not generally into frying minds because of how painful it is. Commander T'Soni is however perfectly willing to make an exception for critters like Byron and all his crazy egotistical followers as soon as they start demanding things. ("Mercy is the responsibility of only the strong who can afford to extend it, but it is the responsibility of all sapient life to stamp out sentients behaving like diseased animals. Megalomania is your disease, and I? _I am your cure._") She would have dealt with Bester that way, if it was not much crueller to send him back to Earth Alliance to be hunted like a rabid dog.

**Nenfaer**: Yeah Xavier's the good cop here (unless you get into brainwashing, extreme bigotry, and that sort of thing that tends to get on the bad side of Aeon after the Seraphim War, if that happens then if he doesn't step aside and sic Liara on you, he'll be the one butchering you) and Liara the bad cop. The Colonials were fairly easy to bring in after they came for refuge. The hardest parts were probably being struck by sheer UEF diversity and the post-scarcity economy where the most scarce resource is one's time. The side-effect is that artisans of all types take up much of the population not involved in research. As for the inter-universe connection, it's just a way for me to poke at the fourth wall. Be alert never to mix up Thel Lodam with Vadam in your mind, it would be as bad as mixing up Sheridan and Shepard. Lodam uses Seraphim Medium Armour since he feels the shoulder towers of Seraphim Heavy are unwieldy for him. Krogan have a hump that goes above their head so the towers don't add much if at all to their height compared to modified Seraphim Medium, Sangheili do not have a hump, so towers would add quite a bit. He already has a hard enough time not banging his helmet on stuff because of his height so…

REVIEW!


	13. Fights With the Elders

A/N: So the attempt to use Wise Glasses for more precise control of energy didn't work because she tried to reduce fatalities instead of the typical job of additional precision i.e. more kill-power. Ah well… Oh, and the reason the women are so much tougher in this iteration of the ME events is because I played ME 1. If you look at the stats with full defensive specs, you will understand what I'm talking about.

After enough reading of other ME fics, I have come to one simple conclusion: If the Batarians are gonna go extinct, let them. The only reason I can think of as to why the Coalition didn't exterminate them was because they don't want to act like any of the over-the-top Old Races you find in fiction, being too controlling of the younger races whenever said younglings decide to be morons.

* * *

Chapter 13: Fights With the Elders

_On/Near Babylon Five, Local date May 22, 2260, Coalition date May 2, 3872_

"It is not be wise to offend the Shadows so, Liaison." Kosh rumbled softly behind her as she tapped in the commands that would vector the aerospace superiority fighter out to the _Surveyor_. He found this whole encounter, though extremely frightening, (That part of his mind was screaming _HOW DID SHE DO THAT?_) also slightly amusing, what with watching a Shadow get their come-uppance. It seemed highly probable that their people could help after all. Kosh just hoped their confidence had real strength backing it up in space as well as in person.

"It give a much better outcome to the futures of the younger local races than if we let you guys continue this pissing contest." Liara snapped sharply and Kosh leaned back a bit instinctively. The Shadow however silenced itself and listened, all fourteen eyes focused on this being in front of her, but not quite dumb/daring enough to ask her to clarify.

"…Although as you have already offended them by killing some of them, doing this will not make much of a difference in the violent response they will give you." Kosh finished, a note of amusement in his voice. The Shadow bared its teeth at him in response to said amusement.

"I'm looking forward to it." She said as she turned away from Kosh and dialled her comm., one of the systems that could fit under her uniform. The devices were less likely to get destroyed as collateral damage in battle that way, even the "Wonder Launcher" which she usually kept under her "dress" after assessing the situation and deciding if she needed any boosters. "Xavier, inform _Babylon Five_ that we are moving away from the station, then activate all stealth systems and wait for us to board before transferring to another ship, we're about to have visitors that will actually give us a mild challenge. Get Gantry One moving and ready to fight."

"Got it Liara." Xavier answered before the line clicked dead.

She looked at the Shadow "I know you have a transponder and it can serve as targeting data. I have no problem with this, because your ships will never get a chance to use that data."

The Shadow emitted a flute-like whistle followed by chattering that was probably her equivalent of snorting derisively and then laughing hysterically, but the Legendary Commander paid it no heed as the Gemini covered the distance between the station and the _Surveyor_ in a fraction of a minute. The battle cruiser began moving as soon as the aerospace superiority fighter entered its inertial control fields, accelerating violently away from B5. They sat (or in the case of the Shadow, was levitated) in the ASF in silence as they waited for the other staff members to arrive. The Shadow screeched angrily as she found that her information link had been closed. "Vorlon! You dare?"

"Not him, me. You have been stagnant too long, Shadow. Far too long. Your tracking beacon has been silenced now. I'm not risking letting you through to the other Shadows with any information." Her thought process ran as follows:_ Your kind will continue to believe that the Vorlons are a more immediate threat and assault them first. Their few weeks of skirmishing with the Vorlons to figure out their strength will be what lets us gain the upper hand in available fleet numbers since we can have ships building ships using Rover-class engineering drones, not just the gantries building ships. The battle groups might not be combat-effective for that time, but as long as you believe we have very few vessels and decide to hit the Vorlons first before mopping us up, or send your followers after us, it will not be a problem. The sixth battle group, which we are assembling right now will handle interim defensive operations if needed… It's a desperate sort of tactic but we need to get enough ships online quickly to fight them effectively when they come for us in massed numbers._

Xavier Fran was handling the "Gantry Problem" by jumping Gantry One out of the system, ejecting the ship it had been working on "half-baked", then bringing it back in by quantum jump. It would offer another ship on their side without revealing their hand to the locals. Although ships launched "half-baked" so early into construction didn't have complete adaptive plating, they had passive camouflage and passive stealth systems, which should be enough to avoid detection at a range of one light-year. They also had their various drives, resource generation, and some of their engineering capacity installed by the time launching "half-baked" actually becomes an option and could slowly complete their own assembly. Usually it was considered not worth having a number of half-helpless hulls sitting around, so Gantries just finished the job anyway. Since they were rapidly approaching a head-on collision with the elder races of this sector, he ordered the Gantries to spam half-baked ships as fast as possible to bolster their numbers of vaguely available vessels.

This meant starting three hulls in the time they would have used to complete one, but then many days for the first of the hulls to actually get finished without Gantry assistance. In the meantime, they were bringing in another Gantry under full camouflage and stealth so that the crew could get off the _Surveyor_ for this fight, just in case. While waiting in the Gemini for the rest of the crew to arrive, T'Soni turned to look at the Shadow "If chaos and strife breeds strength, why do the Shadows not constantly have civil wars, hmm?" Then she remembered she didn't have a designator for the insectoid alien "What is your name?"

"You could not hope to pronounce it. To Morden, I am Second of Three, something he can actually pronounce."

"Alright, Second of Three, please answer my question about your flawed, idiotic ideology now."

"The Vorlons insisted on control and then went further to demanding absolute obedience. By representing the opposite, we push the younger races toward balance in this sector."

"An amazingly noble goal." Commander T'Soni said quietly, dryly, but then grabbed the Shadow by the head and forced her to look into the Legend's red eyes, keeping most of the body still immobilized "Until we consider the number of people you have to acquire as CPUs for your ships in every cycle of dick-waving between you and the Vorlons."

"Some must be sacrificed so that the rest may be saved." The Shadow hissed at her.

"And there is no reason why we should not consign your species to the ash-heap of history, to sacrifice you to save the rest of the local races." She never mentioned it, but Kosh knew full well that the statement also applied to his people. He found this ominous, but did not expect the Coalition to be able to quite muster the power needed to overrun the Vorlon Empire, and so did not bother speaking. "Your ideology sounded awfully Vorlon there, didn't you?" Kosh nodded and the Shadow spat at him, only to have the saliva thrown back in its face with a wagging finger of Commander T'Soni's.

"Commander?" Xavier had popped in through the entry hatch. Most crew members had made their way to their designated hangar bays for the evacuation by now, and he was no different. She nodded at him "Let's move." Xavier tapped a command on the hologram projecting from his chest and the craft lifted off with only a slight feeling of acceleration inside. This was just to let the passengers know which way they were accelerating as having no acceleration direction perception could be very dangerous for passengers piloting a craft of any sort. "So that's what a Shadow looks like, huh." He gestured at the alien, then turned toward Kosh "Greetings, Ambassador Kosh."

The Vorlon had been staying quiet and merely observing the proceedings, but now he had to reply "Greetings, Grand Crusader."

They had engaged all stealth-type systems upon lift-off and thus went undetected as they exited the _Surveyor_ and flew toward Gantry Two's docking bays. They would head to that ship's bridge and coordinate the battle from there since it offered better tactical displays and the like than their armour and the internal command and control suites of Gemini ASFs allowed. Xavier chose to clarify things with Sheridan while they were making the transition "Captain Sheridan, we have rescued Ambassador Kosh and have captured one of the Shadows sent to attack him. We are expecting a Shadow rescue attempt very soon, although we think they'd rather try to shoot us than negotiate." He looked at Liara "You did disable the creature's transponder, yes?"

"Yes, as soon as we arrived on the _Surveyor_." Xavier nodded at the reply.

Sheridan's hologram nodded too, though he looked much more grim "That's good to know, should I order the station into lockdown and actually try to nail Morden?"

"No to the latter, we want Morden to get away and make the Shadows understand that Kosh is untouchable at present." Commander T'Soni stated and Sheridan sighed, then nodded before calling on his end for a station-wide lockdown and perusal of the list of ships that had left in the last few minutes. Then he ordered them to _not_ blow up the Centauri shuttle fleeing toward the jump gate and try to capture it instead, obviously, this didn't work.

Xavier in the meantime smirked at the Shadow "By the way, Second of Three, we were listening in on your chat through Commander T'Soni's feed. I must say that I am impressed by the noble cause in the name of which you have committed all your crimes against sentience." He remembered all to clearly and bitterly the handful of times he had pushed the Big Red Button in his ACU's cockpit to launch strategic missiles at Cybran or UEF settlements that hadn't been evacuated before they were surrounded. His reasoning had been that it would at least not be as drawn-out as the other Commanders would have inflicted upon them, so there wouldn't be too much time for terror to act, before it would all be over. _Monsters always make excuses for themselves…_ he thought morosely "You're no better than the Vorlons. All these manipulations, all these thousands of genocidal war scattered over many millions of years, and for what? They were right when they said that WAR stood for We Are Right, and you are a perfect example of this. Now, Kosh, we've seen some pretty nasty stuff in the locals, and no we don't need you to explain, but what these Shadows do is far worse, far enough that for now we will stand against the Shadows and remain neutral to the Vorlon Empire."

Kosh barely kept his surprise under wraps at the hint as to the Vorlon genetic manipulation of the locals. He nodded at the Grand Crusader, who exited the landing ramp of the Gemini before his attention was drawn to Commander T'Soni as she asked without asking "Kosh, you knew they were coming, one would at least think you'd have had weapons with you." They were exiting the Gemini now into a small docking bay and proceeding toward the ship's bridge.

"It was the price that had to be paid to maintain indirectness of contact between our peoples, to ensure the circle would fulfill itself. But that is now up to, as you called it, time itself to maintain. However, appearances had to be maintained." He rumbled. The Shadow stared at him as she was levitated along in mid-air.

The green-haired woman snorted "In other words, you were going to go down with a fight but go down nonetheless."

"Yes." The Shadow cursed loudly with surprisingly varied diction at him at that while they exited the elevator, moving down the hallway and into the bridge.

Said Shadow shut up abruptly at the holographic display of the space around the Epsilon Eridani system and the numbers of the ship types listed near each cluster of Coalition dots. "If you have such a vast fleet, why do you not show your strength to dissuade harassment from the younger races?" She asked.

"Because we come in peace, and do not intend to terrify them into submission as you old ones are so prone to doing." Commander T'Soni shot back as Xavier began issuing orders at the crew members who'd arrived thus far. "Your races have forgotten the duty the First Ones gave you and have become precisely the sort of control freaks and enslavers the First Ones wanted you to guard against. It's time for someone to take up the duty you have so abysmally failed at."

Kosh remained silent, watching, knowing that this was a show of strength toward him and his people as much it would be toward the Shadows.

"Going evasive, orienting weapons batteries for broadside fire." Kelly stated from her position at the helm—working with Joker for a while had given her some time to study under he who was probably the best helms-person in the Coalition. This would not be a mind-chatter battle since they didn't want to give away too much to Kosh, even though Commander T'Soni was restricting the awareness of both their guests.

"Battle groups one through six are jump-ready." Thel Lodam's gritty voice growled "Should we use any of them?"

"No, not immediately. I want to examine the power of the Shadow vessels first before deciding on that one." Xavier said curtly.

"Understood… contact!" Thel barked as three Shadow destroyer-analogue Battle-Crabs phased in amazingly smoothly from Slipspace and opened up with their particle cannons, one on the _Surveyor_ and two on Gantry One, both of which were moving erratically to reduce damage uptake. The shot that went for the closer Battle Cruiser swiped in the opposite direction of the ship's motion, so contact time was shorter than it would have otherwise been and the shields only went down by about forty percent. The Ship Gantry's shields were hit cleanly by the two beam weapons and dropped nearly a fifth. Both began spewing starfighters as the Shadow vessels belched their own, much smaller, fighters.

"Analysis of enemy?" Xavier barked as he issued other orders on his screen. He watched their warships fire rolling broadsides on the Shadows in retribution—a good chunk of the volley missed—even while the Coalition ships manoeuvred evasively in all directions using their omni-directional inertial-control-based drives. The two ships then locked their primary anti-ship weapons, the much-feared Heavy Microwave Lasers, on their foe and began burning them despite wild Shadow manoeuvres.

"Biological organism engineered and grown for interstellar travel and combat." Miranda was saying as soon as Xavier asked "Not necessarily sentient but definitely alive. Uses harmonic-shifting particle beam weapon. Surprisingly disruptive to our shields, possible specific attack pattern for anti-shield work, possibly gets re-adapted for anti-armour."

"The CPU of a Shadow Battle-Crab is a sentient plugged into it, a captured one, preferably a telepath, and that is why it must die. The amount of repurposing… no untouched naturally-evolved brain that I've seen not of Earth II or the hive-mind races I know of" The hive-mind-capable races included the Cybrans, Aeon and Seraphim to an extent, a few of the UEF able to enter either network, synthetic races, and many insectoid races. "could hope to control such a vast vessel for extended amounts of time without frying itself. The Void is the best mercy we can give those people in those ships now, either already installed or awaiting installation, it doesn't matter which." Commander T'Soni said grimly as she looked at the Shadow who was glaring back defiantly.

The Shadows struck again with their beams and the _Surveyor_'s shields entered the red on the readouts. The Ship Gantry's shields had dropped to under 65% but the Shadow ships were hurting too. The Geminis, Wasps and Coronas had wiped out the enemy fighters within a few seconds of entering the fight. Unfortunately for the Shadows it seemed they and the locals were still in the mindset of cruisers slugging it out instead of massive fighter swarms. That meant they didn't have enough in anti-small craft batteries to ward off the huge wings of bombers that ejected their bombs toward the Shadow warships. The evasive manoeuvres were only mildly effective as proximity detonations still hurt the three ships. However, when they struck at the two Coalition capital ships again, the _Surveyor_ went down to the lower end of the yellow range in structural fields and its outer hull had been scorched with a dark scorch mark slightly scarring the smooth dark surface colours. Kelly flipped the switch on the stealth and camouflage systems and sent the ship flying upward out of the way of future fire, essentially to hide from the enemy for now.

The Shadow ships had also been heavily damaged, particularly from the many accursed alien lasers, boiling away at the hull armour of the ship and forcing the ships to use cortex filtration to deal with the continuous pain. Each had burned one human computer out already from the amount of pain induced by the curious rolling alpha strike of these newcomers followed by their impressive bomber wall. Weapons fire could noticeably hurt the enemy ships but right after scoring flesh the smaller enemy had simply vanished from sensors, perhaps a tactical jump or retreat to lick their wounds? No matter, they would focus on this larger enemy to take it out before it and its ridiculously huge fighter complement could take them out. Still, the fact that their hull only had a seemingly-irrelevant scorch mark after their shields failed was alarming…

Another run by the cloud of enemy bombers made them take near-critical damage and reconsider the idea of pressing the attack, and the sudden ripple of explosions along the rear hull of one of them didn't help. Armour was blasted apart and/or vaporized as damage seemed to sprout up from nowhere. Coalition weapons ranges were restricted in-atmosphere not only due to atmospheric disturbance dampening needs but also due to how far the unit could keep the weapon under some reasonable semblance of passive stealth and active camouflage. In space, the ranges in this regard may have been larger, but projectile velocities were also MUCH larger. This had some unfortunate consequences for the one Shadow destroyer-analogue (by their classification systems for their Battle-Crabs aka front-line warships) that had ten Mavor shells—the space-borne edition of the shells, much lighter and less armoured against interception—rammed up its ass along with a horde of other munitions.

Popular consensus believes that setting off many multi-megaton smart-dispersion (this was why every target within a Mavor's inner blast radii took the same amount of damage, though yield was generally cited at "160 kilotons _to target_") directed yield antimatter warheads inside a ship was unhealthy for the ship. Popular consensus would be correct in this case as the ship tore itself apart from the inside, critical systems failing and power generators exploding as the hull was blown to pieces. This was almost similar to what happens to anything short of a Galactic Colossus or fully upgraded ACU if no other nearby units were found by the Mavor warhead's sensors when it detonated. As much energy as possible would be focused on the one target, with usually bad results for the target. In this case, no focusing occurred since detonation occurred after the warheads punched through the weakened rear armour of the Shadow Battle-Crab.

The other two Shadow ships decided to run and alert their superiors to this race's stealth technology. The technology of this Coalition was too much of a threat to be allowed to remain in the hands of the younger races. They would return with heavier warships and overcome those ships with force of numbers if need be, after they crushed the current largest threat, the Vorlons. It was highly unlikely these Coalition people would simply share their technology with the other races, and so they would be isolated and alone when the Shadows could turn their attention to them and squash them.

There was just one wrench in those plans that the Shadows had not realized: mass production, in the most literal sense possible.

After the two surviving Battle-Crabs ran for it, Commander T'Soni snuffed the last Shadow out by plasma torrent. This was the method least likely to produce some sort of neural pulse that could potentially surprise her screens and get a peep out to the Shadows' collective minds.

* * *

_Babylon Five, Local date May 26, 2260, Coalition date May 6, 3872_

Four days later, whispers came from the fringes near Vorlon Space about fighting going on in their space and Xavier was suddenly very glad he'd ordered his fleet to undergo what was essentially mitosis. The Seventh through Eleventh Battle Groups were now partly fuelling and completing their own construction using Rover-class construction drones, draining much mass from the full-scale Paragons on the Ship Gantries parked nearby, which were working on Twelfth Battle Group. Sixth Battle Group was fully combat-ready and the first five could be ready within a few minutes if they were to be scrambled.

He had decided not to show the inhabitants of Babylon Five what the Ship Gantry really was, for fear of a mass panic. So, he had activated stealth and camouflage for both vessels before deploying Gantry One and sliding the _Surveyor_ in for repairs. To feign weakness, they adjusted the adaptive plating to show damage in that sector of the hull including scorched but functional turrets. In the meantime, a young woman arrived from the Vorlon homeworld with several treatment kits for Kosh that she'd delivered directly to the ambassador.

Kelly was quite happy to have a fellow orange-head around, although Lyta Alexander was quite a bit more apprehensive about meeting new people. She had been astonished by what the command crew let her in on regarding the Aeon Illuminate, and had agreed to offers of lessons by Miranda, who told her that she had been implanted without her knowledge or permission by the Vorlons. This meant she would be able to provide more Psionic power than the highest the local humans had to offer at this time, on par with a typical well-trained Aeon psychic, though not quite professional combatant grade yet. She would need practice and study to reach that sort of level. However, she was also told that her implants were quite crude and would probably need replacing if she wanted to make it to her eightieth birthday. She'd laughed it off, saying that she would feel lucky to live to forty at the rate things were going on the galactic stage.

Lyta had been unimpressed, however, by the fact that Ambassador Kosh refused to speak to her. True, he was usually quite secretive, but now he would only speak to Captain Sheridan and "Liaison T'Soni" as the odd-looking… woman (judging by the figure)… was referred to by most of the B5 crew. Still, she was wondering if she could perhaps get a job with the newcomers if she didn't work for the Vorlons anymore.

In the meantime, reports had come from spy drones near Centauri Prime of Shadow ships and an unknown race whose ships were rather elongated in frame and were painted dark green. If Londo did his part correctly, and he was expected to with how they had saved his lover two days ago shortly before he was recalled to Centauri Prime, the Centauri should be moving against B5 and the Coalition ships present soon. The Coalition command staff met with Sheridan to discuss this… _interesting_ development. Sheridan's first response to the data and recordings was "They are preparing an attack, probably against us."

"Yes, that was also our conclusion. These arrow-like ships are of an unknown faction aligned with the Shadows, we suspect they will form some sort of distraction force since they are the wild card the Shadows have up their sleeves." Xavier said.

Sheridan nodded "The Centauri fear the Minbari, so they will want to figure out a way to draw away the four Sharlins still guarding B5 before they attack. We will have a hard time mustering enough ships to counter the Centauri fleet if that should occur. We have three Omegas" They had picked up some more resistance warships over the last couple months "a Nova battleship and two Hyperion cruisers, not enough to hold back a large-scale Centauri attack dedicated to destroying the station, especially if they send enough ships to occupy you guys while they do a push toward the station."

"We will protect the station with all our resources. We will uphold the Mantle that the local First Ones failed to uphold, the Mantle that the First Ones of our galaxy passed onto mankind's ancestors, the Forerunners."

"Words can only do so much, although the confidence you hold tells me you have something up your sleeves." Sheridan smiled ruefully. "I'd like to hear more about the Forerunners in the future though."

Xavier smirked confidently "No problem. So, how many warships do you think the Centauri will send?"

"I expect thirty to forty, at least ten of which will be their older but still effective Primus-class battle cruisers. The rest will be Vorchan-class cruisers."

"The Coalition Andromeda Command Sixth Battle Group is at full readiness and the First through Fifth Battle Groups can be mobilized at a moment's notice. We have seventy-five ship gantries in all, constantly cranking out uncompleted hulls that literally build themselves since we don't have time to do all of it in-gantry. Seventh through Twelfth Battle Groups are still under construction."

"What?" Sheridan formulated a more intelligent response a mere moment later "How did you amass so many ships so quickly? Did reinforcements arrive from your galaxy?"

"One of the Coalition's most coveted technologies by far is part of what we collectively term 'The Quantum Tech Tree' or just 'Quantum Tech', it allows us to shape mass to our purposes. It also allows us to fabricate mass with minimal energy investment and to draw energy from the background entropy of our and other universes."

Sheridan gaped "_Universes_? You mean not only can you travel between galaxies, but you can drain energy from different _universes_ to use?"

"It's a bit more complicated than that, but that's the basic gist of it."

Sheridan stared for a long moment before saying "I find it remarkable that you haven't overrun the universe yet, and perhaps other universes as well."

"Well, we think that's quite unimaginative and foolish, so we never bothered with the idea." Xavier waved it off. "The point is that we have five hundred assorted automated warships, most smaller and weaker than the _Surveyor_, at our immediate disposal to defend B5 with."

"Those are some large battle groups then, that's eighty-something vessels per group."

"What? Oh, you misunderstand me. That's just Sixth Battle Group, the others would take a few minutes to disengage their current construction activities."

"You built self-replicating devices?" Sheridan's eyes bulged "But that's incredibly dangerous…"

"Caprica is taking care of all of them with her subroutines, so they're not quite Von Neumann devices. In case Commander Ivanova didn't tell you, Caprica is a bio-synthetic fusion, and yes, she's a Coalition citizen, aligned with the Cylon Collective, a minor faction in the Coalition which may merge with the Cybran Nation in the future. Kasumi is helping with her own sub-routines, despite Cybrans like her being mostly organic"

"Six battle groups… three thousand warships in all. If they're up to your standards, especially in stealth, then none of the forces of this sector except maybe the Minbari could resist you for even a brief time. With six more such groups… you'd be the leading power of this sector in terms of military might."

"The Vorlons and Shadows were appointed guardians to the younger races, to keep them safe from and educate them about the dangers of the darkness beyond their known systems. But they have strayed from their duty. We will protect you from the worst of the consequences of your actions, but there will still be consequences… for some, like the Centauri, we will dole out much of the consequences. And no, that's not a threat, at least not toward B5."

"We're detecting a distress call!" Miranda interrupted them over the intercom. "Systems references say it's from what the locals call _Babylon Four_."

"The station that Commander T'Soni said went back in time to establish this small time loop?" Xavier hadn't expected the thing to show up this soon.

"The very same." Sheridan whispered.

Xavier smiled at the commander of B5 "Sheridan, this is your fight… it has to be if time is to be maintained. Don't worry too much though, only the existence of our reality is at stake." _Time itself will make sure you succeed… like I succeeded in deceiving her before Hannah left on her own time travel experience. Maybe I should ask her about what it's like to time-travel, when communications are opened._

"Ha, ha." Sheridan said dryly "I suppose I should get going then."

Xavier nodded "Yes, good luck, Captain."

"Thanks. I'll need it."

* * *

_Minbari Federation Space, Local date May 28-29, 2260, Coalition date May 8-9, 3872_

Xavier was anxious to muster enough warships to challenge the Shadows and prevent them from advancing further into Vorlon territory, but seventh through eleventh Battle Groups needed at least another week to complete even with the resources on-hand working full stride. Unlike Ship Gantries which could be built relatively efficiently by drones in the deployed form, nanolathing could only reach so far from the projecting platform. It could also penetrate only so far into the object being built, hence the number of drones able to work on larger ships at once in the more initial stages was relatively limited (no more than about a hundred) so as to not interfere with one another's resource-routing signal patterns, and they had to build them from the core parts outward so space was limited for the drones. Gantries had emplacements embedded in their arms that did not use drones so much as they used beams like UEF and Aeon nanolathes. With the emplacements belonging to the same unit and leeching off internal resource transfer conduits, no interference would occur and the total speed limit was far higher.

However, news was coming from their recon flotillas (Heavy Frigates and smaller units) that supported the spy drones. Reports indicated forces preparing in Slipspace near several major Minbari colonies or installations. This was a problem since the systems soon to be under attack were all in the parts of the Minbari Federation nearest _Babylon Five_, and the closer they were to B5, the larger the enemy forces. This meant Xavier pulled out the first five of his Battle Groups, splitting them up a bit to handle all the soon to be hotspots while Sixth Battle Group prepared to defend _Babylon Five_.

On Coalition date May 9, 3872, the Centauri forces arrived near B5 and waited. A moment later, hostile "Black Arrow" (current designation) fleets roared out of hyperspace portals, striking out against Minbari installations and warships only to have their alpha strikes intercepted by layers of Asylums, and behind those, Coalition warships parked to block their fire, set with the front ends facing the expected "BA" attack vectors. Ninety percent of the alpha strikes, in applicable cases, vanished against undetected shields as the Minbari began to react to the attempted attacks, while the other ten percent scored against the structural fields of the few ships nearest the focus i.e. centre of the attack wave.

Active-stealthed wings of Revenants and Wailers swung to attack the hostile capital ships—mostly destroyer analogues with a few cruiser and battleship analogues—while Geminis went after the enemy fighters. Apparently the enemy could detect passive-stealthed targets up close because when the Coronas and Iazynes, included among fighter wings for crowd control, got close enough the enemy fighters, they turned to meet the threats. The Iazyne had stronger structural fields and better damage evasion by openings in its airframe, but the Corona's otherwise equal flak-style turret had better traverse and arcs of fire. However, this was not a battle for them since not enough enemy small-craft were deployed to overwhelm the first-strike kill abilities of the Geminis ahead of them. All they really did was distract enemy secondary batteries and help the bombers blast the enemy hulls with destructive energy. The Geminis were also doing the latter, but, well… they did nothing but horribly confuse the enemy since their stuff was exploding for no reason.

The Minbari had called for reinforcements and were advancing on their enemies until said enemies started blowing up randomly. Then they started watching as weapons fire they weren't registering on sensors or even with optical telescopes tore the hostiles apart. Finally, as the lines of the battles shifted closer to them, they struck, careful to avoid the area that the hostiles seemed to be targeting since they were picking up some large transient sensor ghosts (active stealth for larger warships was still not applicable for most ships) there every once in a while when their ships wandered close enough.

Out of twelve attempted attacks, only one succeeded as much as the hostiles would have liked, though the others did manage to hurt a few Minbari ships and installations. The screen of Asylums had been large enough in sheer numbers that the Coalition had not lost any heavy ships, only a few fighters and light cruisers/destroyers. The former was mostly from stray fire, and the latter occurred more often than not from Drakh attempts to fire on eclipsed Minbari targets revealing their approximate positions. The hulks were retrieved by other fighters or ships and the hostile warships were left as shattered wrecks in Minbari space while the rescuers just… went away. Only one attack, the most massive, went unchallenged and obliterated approximately a hundred and ten million Minbari living on their second-largest colony. The Coalition forces couldn't protect everything with their limited forces, and if they'd defended that world even more Minbari would have been left exposed. The Coalition hadn't expected their stealth to be so effective against these new enemies, and so the Minbari paid the price.

The whole Minbari Federation was in an uproar over these events, speculation ranged from it being the Warrior Caste's new weapon to another of the First Ones making themselves known. The Warrior Caste was incredibly angry that they had not been the ones to clearly rout the invaders and was also fuming about being surprised so thoroughly. Were it not for their mysterious benefactors, they might have lost many more ships and installations, not to mention civilians.

* * *

_Near Babylon Five, Local date May 29, 2260, Coalition date May 9, 3872_

However, at the same time, more important events were occurring on _Babylon Five_. Most of the staff were hard at work coordinating the nine fleets engaging the enemy at once, but Kelly and Xavier were preparing for the imminent battle at _Babylon Five_. As expected, the Centauri had arrived and were waiting for the Minbari to leave while broadcasting toward them that they had violated Centauri space and were to be brought in for inspection. The only thing Xavier was interested in making them inspect at this moment—due to their Romanesque tendencies complete with slavery—was a rain of strategic missiles on their homeworld. However, that would be politically impolite and so he hadn't begun moving toward any solution of the sort… yet. On the other hand if Londo failed, then chances were a lot of Centauri planets could potentially end up glassed.

Meanwhile, the Fleet Commander in charge of this Centauri Imperial Fleet detachment was eagerly looking forward to bringing back the long-past and half-remembered days of glory. Personally, he had no problems with the Human-built station of _Babylon Five_, and he liked humans as a whole. Yes, they were vaguely uncouth at times and could border toward arrogance, but hey, at least they learned from their mistakes (although if this was always true they wouldn't have built B5 after the previous four stations were destroyed or went missing) and weren't Narns, the hated enemy of his people.

He had been one of the detachment commanders when the Centauri fleet had ploughed through the jokes that the Narn called heavy cruisers and bombarded the foul beasts "back to the Stone Age" as the humans so quaintly put it. He personally supervised the organization of many of the labour camps and had taken great pleasure in making examples of many of the animals that had stolen their technology to get into space. The small conflicts with the Non-Aligned Worlds had not been enough to satisfy his tastes, but here it promised to be different. _Babylon Five_ would be a nice test for his fleet, having survived several conflicts of its own and come through in one piece. However, it was still Human technology and therefore inferior to the Centauri who had been in space for almost a thousand years. Defeating the station would give them valuable data on Human weapons and tactics. Sooner or later, Earth Alliance would have to be dealt with, and unless they surrendered first he planned on dealing with them like the Narn.

His orders however were clear, he would not fire on B5 unless they fired on him first, and it seemed that was going to happen. It seemed foolish of the Earthlings to sacrifice themselves trying to protect two vagrant colonial ships… True, they may have been a power to reckon with back in their area of the galaxy, but here, they were just two lonely vessels… but Humans were foolish like that. The design of the ships was also interesting, they looked vaguely similar to flying bricks with terraced ends and faces. They were covered with myriad weapons turrets of various designs, suggesting a ramshackle origin, and even their plates looked like patchwork quilts… and where were their fighters? Surely with capital ships of that size they should have fighters somewhere… but he wasn't detecting anything.

"The designs look quite ungainly, are we certain that these are the ships that laid waste to Earth warships?" He asked his first officer.

"Yes sir." The officer sounded neutral, reasonable since despite the appearance of the ships as something approaching flying bricks, their size implied some degree of power. How much, they would learn soon enough "Reports indicate the Earth ships couldn't get past their shields to damage them."

"Where are those shields then? Sensors aren't picking anything up. It's almost like we're trying to scan holograms."

"Maybe it takes a lot of time and energy to activate, or maybe they automatically activate when attacked."

The Fleet Commander snorted "Well, for their sake, I hope those shields activate quickly. What about their FTL capability?"

"Spies say they don't have jump capability…"

"But they have FTL independent of jump physics."

"Yes sir, the mechanisms of how it works are unknown though."

"Ugh, did our spies learn _anything_ of use? I don't think they even told us that the smaller warship was damaged. Looks like Earth Alliance did more damage than they thought."

Unknown to them, Caprica had already compromised their computers enough to tap into the bridge microphones. The First Officer asked after a while "How long shall we wait, sir?"

"Until we get the signal."

* * *

A/N: Review replies!

**DaLintyMan**: NO they would not bring in too many of the extra ships for relatively small battle like the three crabs unless they feel the need to. I think you saw that the Shadows are able to harm Coalition warships, even when at a numerical disadvantage (in terms of total craft involved, the Coalition SPAMS fighters, otherwise the 3 destroyer-analogue crabs would in fact that been enough to overwhelm the two warships). Building more Super Carriers is currently deemed unnecessary as the Coalition finds massed fire generally more effective than single, giant warships.

**KleverKilva**: Yup, Multiverse is being nice for now. On UAW, haven't you seen it yet? The Turian _Hierarchy_, _(M)_Asari, and the slim Ohm Robots look like Salarian body armour.

**Spacebar**: Coalition fleets are outside the system and they didn't want to tip their hands yet to the enemy… until now (Minbari Warrior Caste is going to _balk_). Please note the features I present in this chapter, this is like you not noticing the smell of food after being in a restaurant for a few minutes, but the ship's filter cortex reacts much faster than that so that even though the ship still screams, it can strike back. Yes, it gets taxing with enough sustained pain signals coming in, but that only forces them to withdraw most of the time. Otherwise fights would be far too easy IMHO given the number of HML and sometimes Phason Lasers carried per ship. Looked at the Ch 11 review from you, wacko high relative HP explained by the vast cost of the massively OP field generators installed. Also, units' field generators allow for _more strength with slower speed_ for the same generator or set of generators in earlier generations of generators (insanely low air unit HP and experimental land unit speeds in SupCom 1 explained). Structures' field generators are basically cheaper (lighter), lower-yield types and units get the better generators. Sad thing about nuclear-disrupting energy… it is _grossly_ ineffective (relatively speaking) against a structural field. The phased laser itself would probably do more damage than its payload.

**Nenfaer**: Answered most of your stuff in the chapter. As you've seen, it was not that much of a curb-stomp since the rest of the fleet was, at the time, hiding. As you can see from Spacebar's review, I had to change up canon so Heavy Microwave Lasers would not be, to quote Spacebar "now let me park here and go get a cup of coffee, you'll be dead when I get back."

REVIEW!


	14. From Conflict, Strength

A/N: "You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you're not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable…is each other." Alien, in Contact (1997). I have a feeling this may be quoted at Lorien sometime.

Sorry for late update, been de-motivated (read: lazy) and playing StarCraft 2 online lately. I did read some of the Halo 4 entries on Halo Wiki lately… and am _thoroughly_ unimpressed. Time travel plus ancient maniacal races plus old not-so-maniacal races plus somewhat old hive-mind races driven to semi-madness is much more complex and interesting than the crap they spewed out which is on par with WH40K in terms of the level of nonsensicality (Mendicant Bias apparently interrogated a flood specimen for _**43 years**_…). Clearly the makers of Halo 4 have been playing far too much WH40K. Now the only remaining question is how the hell did MY rendition of the Forerunner-Flood War manage to last 300 years? I may have to ret-con a few details to make the math work out, such as the timing of the Aeon of Strife and other similar galactic events. Or I could just have Crystal say that "Oh, you just misread the number in our joined spiritual memory, Liara, don't worry about it too much, even I managed to forget half the bullshit I've been put through in the lifetimes we had prior to me…*shudders* You don't want to know what kept on happening to our daughters just because we are trapped in this sick Game, it's amazing that they are still reasonably sane given they can remember as much as they want to of their past cycles."

**Why did no one warn me I had my dates wrong? "April May" is not a month!**

* * *

Chapter 14: From Conflict, Strength

_CSC Surveyor, Other side of Epsilon Eridani (Andromeda) from B5, Local date May 29, 2260, Coalition date May 9, 3872_

"Arrogance." Xavier Fran summed up the situation in a single word. "Kelly, you know what to do." Sixth Battle Group was parked between B5 and the Centauri (although they took up a much larger cross-sectional area of space than B5 did, completely erasing any chances of the Centauri shooting around them) with a very large screen of Asylums hanging in several wall-like layers between the Centauri and the fleet. They would be useful against pulse or burst weapons, not so much against continuous beam, but even then they were still nice to have. This was probably the most crowded day on the _Surveyor_'s bridge so far. Jack, Kasumi, Miranda, Jacob, Thel, Ahn, Urz, Mirala, Helena, Caprica and even Caleb (the doctor, also the Drell on this expedition) were each coordinating a part of a battle group.

"Aye." Kelly said, she would take care of defending _Babylon Five_ while Xavier coordinated everything. They had already replaced the "_Surveyor_" near B5 with another battle cruiser, then hid their ship under full camouflage and passive stealth on the other side of the system's primary from the planet B5 orbited.

"Thel, your First Element, right flank." Xavier pointed out to his subordinate as he watched the battles occurring on various 3D displays. The Sangheili, who had split his fleet into three parts for the running battle with the enemy, noted the hostiles inching toward that direction and dispatched a fleet of fighters to deal with them.

"Minbari are leaving." Kelly said a moment later.

"Caprica, Kasumi you done yet?" He looked over to see the two part-synthetics handling their secondary battles fairly well. By that, he was referring to hacking into the Centauri ships' computers and downloading everything while the Centauri waited for the Minbari to leave.

"Downloads complete, sir." The blonde replied. The Master Thief just gave him a curt nod.

"Good" He opened a channel "_Babylon Five_, please tell your fighters and ships to remain within ten kilometres of the station, we may be conducting some aggressive manoeuvring and we don't want your pilots or ships getting smacked by the rear end of a capital ship." In reality, it was to ensure they didn't become collateral damage statistics in case the Centauri\s first volley somehow got through.

"Acknowledged." Garibaldi answered, having been put into temporary command of B5 while Sheridan and Ivanova were both off to make sure time happened. Major Ryan and Captain Hiroshi responded identically, they were effectively the first and second in command of the B5 fleet, so their cooperation was nice to have.

"Thank you."

The Centauri had advanced somewhat, then broadcast to them a succinct message "Surrender or die!"

Xavier Fran checked that all starfighter fleets were launched and in position before replying "The same to you."

The Centauri fleet fired at a range of eight thousand kilometres. Their weapons didn't even get halfway before dissipating into nothingness on a series of shield bubble walls. Kelly toggled all units to weapons free and began vectoring the starfighters to attack from the rear flanks of the Centauri. Xavier merely sighed and felt vaguely sorry for the poor bastards on the receiving end of the full firepower of five hundred Coalition warships and their carried starfighters, more than any one of the significantly larger "Black Arrow" fleets had to deal with.

The results of applying many hundreds of heavy artillery munitions and many tens of thousands of lesser shells/pulses/ bombs of assorted types, combined with several thousand Heavy Microwave Lasers, were not pretty, for the Centauri at least. Certainly, the explosion patterns were beautiful enough, and so was the Centauri hulls glowing and melting seemingly out of nowhere, but being on the receiving end kind of precluded everything except dying. As for why there was no trace of the HMLs, there weren't enough particles in the way of the beams to generate even mild heat incandescence of air, which was typical despite the design that minimized such losses.

The fighting lasted, at a generous estimate, five seconds from the first Centauri shot fired to the last Coalition shell impacting broken hull fragments, a moment after the last laser ceased fire. The bombers hadn't even joined the battle yet. The Centauri fighters, which had been split up among the Geminis to pursue and destroy, were gone seconds later, following the forty battle cruisers and cruisers that had accompanied them. At a ratio of one to one, Coalition warships could outmanoeuvre, outrun, out-endure and of course completely confound (stealth/camo) their opponents, despite being more or less comparable (depending on class) in firepower per warship (the Coalition had a vast advantage in fighters balancing out lower capital ship weapon yields). At a ratio of twelve and a half to one, favouring the Coalition, it was plain old fashioned bullying.

The point had been very eloquently made, "Don't arrogantly fuck around with what you don't understand." They had given the Centauri next to no data on their weapons and systems, and that, of course, was the whole point of the exercise. It was too bad Emperor Cartagia was too much of an imbecile to understand these two points, and most Centauri were too cowardly to just get rid of him by military revolt and firing their weapons at the Imperial Palace. Actually, they probably never even thought of it given Cartagia's advertising of bringing back the "good old days". Chances were most Centauri didn't understand how insane their Emperor was and how much of a hammer it would bring down on them.

* * *

_Babylon Five, Local date May 29, 2260, Coalition date May 9, 3872_

"What?" Garibaldi said flatly as he watched the Centauri fleet blow up within seconds and the whole area flare brightly from a large number of detonations. He blinked, then threw the switch on the communications to the _Surveyor_. "What the hell was that?"

"That was our ace in the hole." Xavier said shortly.

"How large an ace are we talking about?"

"Careful, Mr. Garibaldi, the walls have ears. If you want more information, ask the Liaison."

"I think I will do just that." Garibaldi said dryly. Little did he know that he would actually successfully sprain his jaw when told the truth by Liaison T'Soni about matter fabrication and energy fabrication. When he asked Sheridan about it, he would be even more astounded that the Captain already knew.

When the _White Star_ exited Slipspace near _Babylon Five_ several hours later, it was only a few minutes before two Sharlins jumped in near them, identifying themselves as Lennan's _Bright Star_ and one of the other vessels under his command. The first thing he said when he hailed them was "We have been attacked."

Delenn's eyebrows rose in surprise, while the other Minbari on her bridge made assorted noises and expressions of shock "Where, by whom, and what's the damage?"

"Our second largest colony took orbital bombardment fire and we lost several warships, but the other attacks were repelled by forces we could not detect." Delenn mentally stiffened, remembering what John had told her about the power of the Coalition and what little information on their technology that he'd been given, could it be them? They could potentially have had long enough to construct units… "Eleven of the twelve attacks essentially failed their objectives. You must come back with us, Delenn, the Grey Council requests your presence in our preparation for the coming war."

"The Grey Council wishes my presence?" She questioned.

"Yes. You know what is at stake. The Shadows are on the move while our new, unknown enemy strikes at us from the darkness, preventing us from aiding the Vorlons. You presence would give our people hope and stability in these troubled times. They know of your breaking of the Council. Many feel disturbed, but many more feel inspired by your strength. You can unite us during this time, be the glue that holds us together. The worker and religious castes are… doubtful of their relationship with the warrior caste. We are now fragile, but you can make us strong once more, Satai."

"I am no longer Satai, Lennan."

The older male shook his head "You are always Satai, Delenn."

Sheridan interrupted them by butting into the camera's line of sight. "You must go, Delenn, without the Minbari, we'll have a hard time holding the other races together. Your people need you now. I will mobilize all the support B5 and, if they are willing, the Coalition representatives can give you."

"Captain Sheridan," Lennan said to the back of the human's head on his screen "There is more that you must know. Mere hours ago _Babylon Five_ was struck by an entire Centauri battle group. They were ostensibly after the Coalition vessels."

"They must have tried to destroy B5… What's the station's status?" Susan Ivanova butted in from the other side and Delenn grabbed both humans now in front of her and stepped back a few steps so that the camera view wouldn't be crowded with too many up-close faces squashed next to each other.

"Completely unharmed, the Centauri were… annihilated by masses of stealthed warships probably belonging to the Coalition. The closer to B5, the larger the attack groups were of our new enemy, forcing us to abandon B5 to support our own defensive forces. However, that is not all." The three on his screen tensed at his grimace "As I said before, eleven out of the twelve attacks were repelled by vessels we could not clearly detect on sensors. Only wrecked ships that failed under massed and, from the footage, most likely accidental hostile fire were detected… they match what we have observed thus far of Coalition design principles." They relaxed slightly, it was this topic again, Lennan seemed to have thought it important enough to re-state…

Delenn reviewed the footage for a moment "The Grand Crusader warned me that the Centauri had unidentified ships at their homeworld… but we didn't expect these black-arrow ships to move this soon. It is good that the Coalition FTL mechanism allowed their newly-constructed fleets to reach the hotspots before the enemies could do too much damage."

"You knew this was coming and didn't warn us?" Lennan questioned. "And what do you mean newly constructed?"

The time for concealing of strength was past, war had come, and a show of power was needed. Xavier Fran had told Sheridan of this before he went off on his mission to ensure time happened. "They built almost all their ships from scratch after they came to this sector of space. They currently have six battle groups active, five of which were split up to defend the eleven hotspots they could afford to defend. The Minbari government bureaucracy kept directing them to Delenn instead of listening to their warnings, and that's why you lost people! I sent a message to the Grey Council and got nothing back. We tried to warn them. They just didn't listen."

Lennan huffed "Bureaucracy… a warrior's greatest enemy, whoever blew you off as untrustworthy should be court-martialled… How did they build these undetectable ships from scratch? Surely we would have detected them while they were being built?"

"Not if their shipyards are cloaked too, and we don't know where they are or how many they have." Delenn said morbidly "We know the Shadows can at least hurt them, but if they can muster sufficient numbers then that might not be a problem, especially if they can go in under stealth."

"Let us hope they remain on our side then. It is not like we have much of a choice at this moment in time…" Lennan said quietly. There was a moment of silence.

"Delenn, you need to go." Sheridan said quietly, clasping his hand on Delenn's shoulder.

"John…"

"This is too big, the crap has just hit the fan…" he squeezed her shoulder a bit as she put her hand over his "Come back safe, we'll both keep a candle lit until we are together again."

"We too will keep a candle lit for you, Captain Sheridan. Tell your allies that we thank them for their assistance."

"Thank you, Senior Captain." Sheridan replied. A few minutes later Delenn had shuttled over to the _Bright Star_ and all three ships departed the area.

* * *

_A Vorlon Border System, Local date May 29, 2260, Coalition date May 9, 3872_

Delenn's assessment regarding Coalition-Shadow combat proved tragically incorrect. Apparently, the Coalition had misjudged the classifications of their enemies. Those three they routed weren't destroyer-analogues. No, they were the Shadow equivalent of picket frigates. There was also the fact that they could fully detect ships under passive stealth and active camouflage at under 100 kilometres range in space i.e. ramming proximity. That didn't quite matter to the warships of the First Battle Group as they jumped in behind a Shadow fleet two hundred strong assaulting a smaller Vorlon fleet of around one hundred forty warships. Yes, the first volley of shells delivered in a total of two seconds took out a good thirty-three of the Shadow ships and damaged a comparable number, but eighty of the Battle-Crabs whipped around and fired their continuous-beam type weapons at the Coalition fleet which already had passive stealth and active camouflage running.

Their accuracy was surprising, every shot finding a mark and blowing sixty Coalition ships into non-manoeuvrable wrecks (though most guns still functioned). Apparently, the Shadows had brought two sensor ships, which allowed them to detect the Coalition warships. Those became priority targets by the hundreds of thousands of starfighters flooding into the Shadow fleet—a couple hundred were lost to Shadow main gun fire that they got in the way of—and had to execute tactical jumps. This threw off the aim of the Shadow warships as they lost sensor feeds and had to more or less locate their enemy by Jump-leapfrogging into their faces (as they could detect them at knife-fighting ranges), spraying and praying as they phased out of Slipspace each time when leapfrogging. Another two dozen Coalition warships, despite being evasive, were located and quickly wrecked while forty-one Shadow warships were sliced apart by laser, particle, antimatter, plasma and kinetic weapons. At the same time more than fifty Shadow warships were being swarmed to dust by thousands of starfighters each while they leapfrogged forward, despite the cruisers using their weapons to great effect against said starfighters. Their density in space allowed for hitting several targets with each rapid-fire half-powered swipe from the lower-yield beams, well, lower in yield compared to the Frigates/Destroyers.

The Vorlon fleet had broken off contact and had begun to retreat, with a few Shadow warships watching them go just in case. Another Shadow fleet arrived with another hundred warships, more than doubling the remaining Shadow numbers and adding another sensor ship to their arsenal. The frigate and destroyer analogues opened up in a massed volley before the sensor ship escaped to Slipspace… and this time they didn't miss. A hundred and forty-one Coalition warships buckled beneath the tide, and Xavier Fran, directing the battle from afar on the _Surveyor_ with three more Battle Groups backing him, whistled in appreciation of the Shadows' power as he adjusted the target selection priorities of the starfighters. They were targeting him accurately despite violent evasives with passive stealth and active camo, although they were reliant on dedicated sensor ships to do it… or on closing range. Their armour was extremely durable to withstand as much fire as they already had, and their particle beams, though much lower yield than Covenant plasma projectors, were delivered in continuous beam as opposed to pulse beam, perfect for cutting down Coalition shields and structural fields.

"This… is the sort of thing that happens when two races either of or equal to the First Ones clash. We would have been equal competitors if they'd only had the sense to mostly _build_ their ships instead of completely _growing_ them." Commander T'Soni commented from where she hovered over his shoulder. "This coming war will be tough, but as long as we can drag it out long enough, we will be able to overwhelm them through sheer numbers."

While she had been speaking, First Battle Group had been whittled down to one hundred and sixty-three active vessels, half of them damaged (and obviously, sans shields by this point), plus three hundred and ten in assorted stages of disassembly with all weapons that could still train themselves on the enemy doing so and firing. Incidentally, the inertial control that allowed weapons to have minimal recoil (otherwise, firing a Mavor planet-side would set off a glaringly obvious seismic shock) also allowed fragments of ships to orient themselves through the collective effort of their turrets. Yes, this generally took a grossly long time (measured in tens of seconds), but the effect came out to wrecked ships no longer being burnt-out husks like they would self-destruct to back before the last days of the Covenant War.

However, the Shadows had gone down to a bit under ninety warships with a single sensor ship still functional, so it looked like this would be a battle where the two sides would grind each other to scrap… It certainly looked that way as the Shadows pushed into the Coalition battle line and began exchanging close-range fire with them. Shadow anti-fighter pulse batteries were doing a great job swatting starfighters, but they wouldn't be able to wreck enough to make that much of a difference in the timeframe of this clash. Ravager Plasma Chainguns were tearing chunks from the Shadow hulls with each hit, and there were tens of thousands of them.

The Shadows had fired their main guns again and the Coalition fleet was cut down to seventy vessels while forty more Shadow vessels failed under the immense weight of bombs, missiles, and assorted lasers thrown at them. Now if only they could get through the cruiser screen and take down that last sensor ship, they would be able to pull away and engage with relative impunity. The jump drives had finally re-stabilized themselves and Xavier ordered a jump to within the cruiser screen surrounding the sensor ship by all remaining vessels while wreckage continued to engage and tie up the battered enemy. They couldn't have warped in due to the ships in the way (unless planning on ploughing straight through the target, something Xavier didn't intend on revealing yet), and Slipspace here was too volatile to be worth it, so… yeah.

The sensor ship might have been crippled by the initial strikes and was dying from numerous Heavy Microwave Lasers and other weapons, but its cruiser screen dispersed quickly enough for the other Battle-Crabs to fire toward the sensor ship, hacking all but thirty-two of the remaining Coalition vessels into wreckage. Those thirty-two went to warp and exited above and below the ecliptic relative to the Shadow warships, raining fire upon them while maintaining control over the gigantic swarm of starfighters which were making more attack runs on their foe. The Shadows did the smart thing with their remaining thirty-one vessels, given they couldn't see their enemy and another full-scale fighter run would finish them off despite trying to use hyperspace to evade runs. They phased into Slipspace/hyperspace and left the system, leaving stealth monitoring drones that were promptly destroyed.

Second through Fourth Battle Groups entered the system via warp and began salvaging the remaining parts of First Battle Group, piecing them together and getting to work on reconstructing them enough to be able to pick up their fighters and jump back to the area around the local Epsilon Eridani system. This was a process that would take a couple hours. In the meantime Xavier and Liara were busy talking about how to best gauge the Shadow response to this battle. "Effective Shadow strength throughout the battle had been no more than two hundred ships, and they thrashed five hundred of our ships, probably mostly due to our relatively low individual yield weapons and how effective their beams happened to be against our defences. The only saving graces we really had were the power of our starfighter swarms and the way their weapons didn't seem very effective against our armour with how much they needed to do to burn through." She had told him about the misclassification thing earlier, but there was something else about classifications that she'd observed "We haven't seen their battle cruiser or battleship analogues yet, but when we do I think we might actually find good use for the _Ascendant Justice_. One plasma projector shot could at least, with a glancing blow, put out of commission any Shadow warship Kosh told me about, and the _Ascendant_ has fifty-four of them with twenty-second recharge."

"Why didn't the Vorlons assist us?" Xavier looked a bit glum at the results they'd obtained from this experiment/provocation. They would need to get working on more warships quickly if they were to withstand a concentrated Shadow attack on B5, even if Xavier actually used tactics in battle instead of having his ships sit there and take it. They should also probably build orbital defence platforms around Epsilon Eridani…

"They weren't sure if we would be on their side or not, they are old and scared of new developments. We… well, we're about on par as a new development with finding another race of First Ones, technologically speaking, we're stronger in some areas and much weaker than others compared to the average First One race before they left."

"Liara, Kosh spoke of the Rim, where the First Ones went, what and where is the Rim?" He knew that she knew… and he was beginning to suspect things with what she said sometimes.

"All in due time, Xavier, all in due time. For now we need to break up this war by making both groups more worried about a third group than each other. A greater storm is coming and the First Ones of this area should be there to assist the younger races through it. The Vorlons must answer for their crimes and must be confronted with what they could have been… and in a way, are." She snorted and shook her head "I sound like a Vorlon sometimes, all intimidating and mysterious…"

"You have your reasons, which thus far have made sense to us" _in other words we'd probably receive invites to psychiatric help if you told _them_ the truth_ "and it's not that important at the moment other than the knowledge that we need to get our fleets rolling ASAP." They would be able to restore eighty percent of the First Battle Group from what they were seeing in terms of intact and repairable wreckage plus mass from irreparable wreckage. They would tow away some of the Shadow wreckage for analysis and completely destroy the rest so that the Shadows couldn't salvage them. All the smaller bits of Coalition wreckage also needed to be soaked up as well to prevent the Shadows from obtaining samples of Coalition hull materials.

* * *

_Z'ha'dum, Local date May 29, 2260, Coalition date May 9, 3872_

Morden was glad to be home, well, what he'd called home since his enlightenment. There were many other beings of various races here, all associated with the Shadows, all with the common goal of improvement of all species, improvement that could only come through strife and conflict. Peaceful civilization could only inevitably result in stagnation and morbidity. Those that came out on top in the struggle for existence would be stronger for it. The Shadows worked tirelessly for their cause, with dedication far more zealous than that which most sentients would understand. The war that was growing in the sector had little to do with death, no, it was about life and the strength that life could have if it could fight for its existence. The coming of the Coalition was actually helpful in some ways, inspiring the younger races to strengthen themselves so that they may one day attain might comparable to the new faction.

The Centauri had been idiots to attack them given the information they'd already gotten from their spies. However, they were now planning a full-scale war against the Earth Alliance, which was excellent for the strengthening of the races, or at least strengthening of whoever won. Cartagia and Clarke had egos of such magnitude that being in the same universe was too much for them to handle.

The amusing thing about the Vorlons had been their unwavering belief that growth came from, of all things, obedience and inner contemplation. "Who are you" was their question for the ages, treating the younger races with contempt like children instead of recognizing that sooner or later they would need to leave the nest and fight out a place for themselves in the universe. But now, the tides had been turned and they had been taken by surprise. Their low numbers—only a few hundred million—had crippled them, a clear case of entropy setting in and wiping out stagnant races. Vorlon children were almost unheard of while the Shadows were ready to spread across the galaxy as soon as the containment was broken permanently. However, they would first need to deal with Sheridan and his little alliance at _Babylon Five_. A grand alliance working for the common good of all would only result in stagnation and death like the Vorlons inflicted on the younger races.

The sad thing, at least from an outsider's perspective, was that Morden didn't seem to understand that the Shadows had gathered their servant races and individuals at Z'ha'dum repeatedly for exactly the same objective, with the same means. They were a grand alliance of sorts working for the "common good of all" and which were controlled by genetic manipulation/psionic indoctrination. But hey, one couldn't have everything in life… sometimes, one couldn't even have enemies that took a moment to stop and think before acting. Such was the way of things.

* * *

_Babylon Five, Local date May 29, 2260, Coalition date May 9, 3872_

Captain John Sheridan had thought he had reached about as glum a look as his face could hold.

Captain John Sheridan had also thought that by thinking the previous thought he had practically been asking the universe to shove proof to the contrary up his ass, or more appropriately in his face.

Captain John Sheridan was correct in one of these two thoughts.

"What do you mean there wasn't that much to clean up, Michael?" He asked his security chief.

"I mean the debris just disappeared into nowhere, as if the Coalition has many more ships in the area and used their starfighter screens to vacuum it all up, which is wholly reasonable given the fact that the Centauri blew up out of nowhere."

"If that is so… what have we gotten ourselves into?"

Garibaldi sighed "Speak for yourself, Captain, I'm just glad they're on our side… for now."

Sheridan nodded grimly "Well, first things first, round up all the Centauri on the station and put them in one of the hangar bays under guard. I need to talk to Vir about this." He was after all deputy to Londo… "Oh, and Commander T'Soni's presence would be welcome as soon as she gets back."

* * *

A/N: Editing "Sic Transit Vir" to be before these events.

* * *

Vir Cotto was wringing his hands as Sheridan looked at him impassively, not staring, looking, without making a sound, waiting for him to crack. _"So, what are your people up to now? Haven't you done enough stupid shit over the last few months? Even Londo has seen it, you guys have attacked n factions of the non-aligned worlds, continuing your genocide of the Narns, trying to blow up hundreds of thousands of people from all different races which will bring down the might of the whole sector on Centauri Prime's head…"_ That was what he wanted to say, instead, he opted for the guilt trip instead because Vir had enough decency to know what guilt was, and because he'd made arrangements for how this interrogation would go with a certain someone already "…Please explain to me how this happened."

"It wasn't us… I mean wasn't me, if I'd known they were coming… I'd have told you everything. Emperor Cartagia is… insane at best. He's made a deal with Mr. Morden's associates and I think they want the station destroyed. He didn't tell any of the Centauri here what was happening because he expected us to die with the station."

Commander T'Soni's green and white form swept forward into Vir's face, baring her slightly pointed, pearly white teeth at him in a broad grin, broader than a typical human would be capable of. "Well then maybe we should stick you all on the first shuttle back to Centauri Prime to throw his failure in his face." _At the very least it'll get him to kill some of his advisors… and getting Londo onto the throne is so much easier if no one else is around to vie for it._

"He'll kill us all if you send us back." Vir was trembling, glancing rapidly back and forth between Sheridan and the gleaming teeth mere centimetres form his face. He was leaning back away from the woman, all his senses screaming _DANGER CLOSE!_

"Then it's your own fault for not being intelligent enough as a people to roast the palace from orbit." Commander T'Soni said coldly, her crimson irises flaring a bit for additional intimidation value. She had been persuaded to play the bad cop by Sheridan just in case Vir actually did know something. If he didn't, like now, they would have let him stay on the station without a problem anyways…

Sheridan sighed "Marcus Cole will be your minder, Vir Cotto. Do not make me regret allowing you to remain on _Babylon Five_."

"You won't, sir, I swear."

"Alright, then, see you later, Vir. Try not to make Marcus kill you."

Over the next couple of days, Delenn reported that the Grey Council had tried to unbalance itself by electing another of the Warrior Caste to its ranks. She had told Neroon that the Coalition was not trying to be a threat but that if they tried it was unlikely Minbari sensors could reliably overcome their stealth enough to fight on relatively even terms. The sensors on the Vorlon-Shadow border had reported eerie inactivity from both races as if both were trying to decide whether or not they should attack the Coalition first. Thankfully they seemed too divided to consider negotiating with each other so far, so neither had acted. However, the Minbari were extremely pissed at the Centauri given images captured by Creep Spy Drones and their mother ships operating near Centauri Prime. These showed the "Black Arrow" ships and even a Shadow ship in orbit around Centauri Prime among Centauri Imperial Fleet ships.

* * *

_Babylon Five, Local date June 12, 2260, Coalition date May 23, 3872_

In the meantime, in high orbit over Proxima III, the crap hit the fan between Earth Alliance and the Centauri Empire. "…Cartagia and the Centauri people will no longer tolerate being spied upon and being subjected to the whims of the government of Earth. Its experimental minefield technology has harmed us once, but never again!" That was the only message the Centauri sent.

There was no opportunity for any damaged Earth warships to surrender in that battle. Of twenty Earth Force ships involved in pacifying the rebellious colony, only three would survive the hyperspace transit to arrive several hours later at _Babylon Five_. "_Babylon Five_, we are non-hostile, our weapons are not powered, repeat we are NOT hostile! Do not fire, repeat, DO NOT…" Brindley broke into a coughing fit as the noxious fumes of fried electronics wafted his way from several consoles that had short-circuited from damage "DO NOT FIRE!"

"Move one thousand kilometres on your x-axis and we will defend you against the Centauri warships." Xavier stated decisively.

"Do what he says." Sheridan confirmed.

"Do as they say!" Brindley barked to his remaining subordinates "How'd you know…"

"We are detecting them inbound with Centauri IFFs, I'm not surprised, given their insane emperor… I assure you none of those Centauri ships will be going home today."

The Centauri ships that had been following them entered normal space, turned, and tried to leave upon fully realizing how close they were to the station. They never got a chance as they had taken too long and Coalition munitions, fired from a screen of stealthed ships encircling them, had arrived on target before they could open new jump points.

In the meantime, Brindley's crew was dwindling rapidly as injured crew members disappeared in soft shimmers of light. He sighed, this was not exactly a surprise, but that sort of precision… he shuddered to think what sort of computing power was needed to do that. "General, your injured have been removed to our medical facilities and are being taken care of. No harm will come to them." Sheridan announced "Please have your staff ready with you on your bridge in five minutes so that we may talk."

Brindley rolled his eyes at the lack of any choice in the matter. After gathering his staff, he told the microphone "We're here." Then he suddenly realized that he and his staff were enveloped in a soft, fading glow and that, more importantly, _they were now somewhere else_.

"Hello, General, welcome to _Babylon Five_. You should be pleased to note that since your last visit we've uncovered some of the skeletons in the closet of Earth Gov." The green-haired, crimson-eyed _thing_—Brindley couldn't think of it as a woman despite the resemblance—greeted them. "Now that formalities are over, where the hell did the Centauri attack you? I'm surprised their mad Emperor acted so quickly…"

"We were in orbit over Proxima III when they hit us. It's your fault, yours and Sheridan's, the recorded message said that Cartagia wouldn't stand for more interference by humans with what he claimed to be the Centauri destiny. They even kept fighting us in hyperspace and killed two of our ships there, and you know how unstable fights in that space are. They cut off all avenues of escape except Minbari space and here… We need to get a message to Earth as soon as possible. We're at war and Earth Force doesn't know it."

Sheridan snorted "You mean they jammed your transmissions? Well, in case you didn't notice, Earth Gov has been jamming US since we broke away."

"One of your Coalition friends' warships could easily leave the jamming range and send the transmission. This is bigger than just B5, Sheridan, all our colonies, all our protectorates are threatened. I can't believe you'd let humanity be threatened in such a way over something so petty."

"We wouldn't have a problem with sending your damned message IF ONLY EARTH WOULD BELIEVE US!" Sheridan snapped. "How likely do you think it is that they'd believe us if we told them the Centauri had attacked Earth Force? Let me tell you this, General, Clark is in cahoots with the Shadows and their servants just to cling to his power. The Shadows' servants are involved with the Centauri attacks on Minbari territory. All has been quiet on the Vorlon-Shadow front recently, and guess what that means? It means the Shadows have mustered enough forces to come down and wipe out any of us if they manage to launch a new offensive and overwhelm the Vorlons as they had been doing for some time before this lull. It is YOU who are letting malevolent influences, from within and without, destroy Humanity!"

Brindley's quiet response was clearly half-hearted at best "You have a tendency to exaggerate, Sheridan. The Centauri are the problem and we'll need everyone to help deal with them. You saw what happened to the Narn in their war." The Centauri had worn the Narn military down and then bombarded their homeworld.

"I have proof of what I am saying." Sheridan played back several intercepted transmissions from Clark, speaking of meeting with Mr. Morden, then showed footage of Morden with the Shadows, and finally showing the black arrow ships over Centauri Prime with a Shadow warship in their midst. "I hope you will be brave enough to side with the right side when it comes time to get rid of Clark."

"What if these are…" Brindley trailed off and sighed, knowing full well that these recordings were not fabrications "Never mind."

"So are you proposing we join forces against the Shadow threat?" Christov asked cautiously.

"That would be good for the long-term health of this sector." The green-haired Coalition ambassador told them. "However, _Babylon Five_ will not go back into Earth Alliance control, it must remain a neutral meeting ground for all."

"We will take those who wish to aid us, and let go of those who want to go back to Earth Force. We will go it alone if need be, with the Minbari and the Narn on our side. You must understand however that separately we don't stand a chance. If the Minbari lose, humanity will fall shortly thereafter. The Shadows will swarm Earth and that'll be it."

Brindley set his jaw before looking toward the two Coalition representatives present "Alright then… the next question is the new technologies you have… will you be agreeable to sharing some of it?"

"No." Xavier answered immediately "Except in the direst of circumstances civilizations should develop along their own route. More powerful races have a duty to defend the weaker ones, but not in ways that throttle the progress of the weaker ones. Self-determination is the most important thing after all. We will ensure your survival, but your condition by the end of this conflict is up to you." _You with me Commander?_ He broadcast toward her.

_Yes, too many times have attempts at guidance or uplifting backfired or been used for malevolent ends. The number of Reapers in existence proves that all too dramatically. Galactic civilizations, if they follow that pattern, inevitably grow weak as a result of loss of diversity. If they are to grow strong, the elders must stand back and not interfere. Interaction is acceptable, as well as rescuing them from destruction, but intervention in their affairs is not a good idea. Even in the case of the Forerunners, they grew weak and complacent enough that a subversive enemy like the Flood could overwhelm them in a war of attrition._ The big advantage of thought-speech was that it was faster than talking. The disadvantages included less consideration before speaking and a more jumbled presentation of ideas.

Xavier continued with "We will, however, provide aid against the Centauri when it is necessary. Now, about the transmission to Earth, perhaps you could back off on the so-called blockade of B5?" He knew full well the machine on the planet below could pierce it with trivial ease, but that was Sheridan's ace in the hole if he wished to use it.

Brindley nodded "We will, if you can get one of our ships out of this area to send off a message."

Xavier nodded "Not a problem." It would be the first relative olive branch passed between Coalition humans and "Babylon 5 Humans" as they were termed among the Coalition crew.

* * *

Shadow Battle-Crab classifications: (Note: Class 1,2,3 and 4 are successively more powerful particle beam weapons!)

Frigate-analogue (formerly misclassified as destroyer-analogue): 1 continuous particle beam weapon (Class 2) forward, 6 "spines", 8 anti-fighter pulse batteries, roughly 1 km in length, about 40 fighters.

Destroyer-analogue: 5 particle beam weapons (Class 2), 8 spines, 16 anti-fighter batteries, roughly 2 km length, about 60 fighters.

Cruiser-analogue: 6 particle beam weapons (Class 1), 8 spines, 28 anti-fighter batteries, roughly 2 km length, about 150 fighters.

Carrier-analogue: 6 particle beam weapons (Class 1), 12 spines, 30 anti-fighter batteries, roughly 2.5 km length, about 900 fighters. Not as flattened as cruisers.

Battle Cruiser-analogue: 8 particle beam weapons (Class 3), 12 spines, 24 anti-fighter batteries, roughly 3 km length, about 150 fighters.

Battleship-analogue: 5 particle beam weapons (Class 4), 6 particle beam weapons (Class 3), 16 spines, 48 anti-fighter batteries, roughly 4 km length, about 150 fighters.

Note that Class 2 particle beams can kill a Coalition battle cruiser in three and a half shots.

* * *

A/N: Review replies!

**KleverKilva**: Yeah, I'm glad too, took me long enough (13 goddamned chapters!)

**Burn te fleetD**: Thanks

**Spacebar**: 1) Yep, perfect accuracy… unless sensor locks are lost, for example, they never missed Gantry One without active camouflage and passive stealth (and that was only done to keep the heat off B5). I'm going to change the gun powers/numbers around on the various classes of Battle-Crabs to make them fit my mental roles for them… 2) Oh, okay then. 3) Ah, okay, so more effective than expected for the yield, ah well not like we'll write that cross anytime soon, if ever.

**The-killer-of-007**: I agree that this whole situation has gotten out of hand since I had to figure out a way to make game mechanics enter a reality and didn't think enough about the consequences until I found out the hard way it had run away from me. However, rest assured that heavier Shadow warships (analysis of the Battle-Crabs was inaccurate, those were frigate-type among the Shadows, not destroyers) will be well able to deal with Coalition warships en masse. I am aware that a slug accelerated to a large enough percentage of c will be adequate to deal with a Coalition warship or installation, although no one around here has seen fit to possess such weapons yet ("This, my friends, is the potential of Mass Effect technology taken to its logical extreme, projectiles fired at FTL speeds within a mass-free tunnel through reality, which means there is no inertia, which means whatever it hits will suddenly have a hole all the way through it the size of the slug's cross section, and yes this includes planets. Even with protective measures installed, it is still likely to result in the inbound round being turned into a gigantic shotgun blast, if against a planet, producing a crater several hundreds of kilometres wide and at the very least yielding a planetary mass extinction event. This weapon can fire once per few seconds… and is sometimes known as a Mass Relay"). **Still, we have to keep in mind that these guys built a weapon which could have killed over a hundred planets in one shot, with only about an hour and a half's charge time and which is so efficient that it could be mounted on a planet without vaporizing said planet!** Seriously, the only factions I know that can overwhelm them (without themselves being total gods) would be from WH40K, and even then they wouldn't win in a war of attrition (I am referring to a war of attrition more than say ten years long) in space and on the ground they would be grossly crushed (come on, plain non-powered swords and axes are still effective against Space Marine armour?).

**Nenfaer**: It will take some time to develop an effective psionic weapon against the Shadows, as the Coalition doesn't know that much about them and they don't have millions of minds working on the same topic at a time here the way they do back home. Accelerating half-baked construction is possible, but Rover drones have a maximum effective range of only a few kilometres (much further than the default patrol radius around a Kennel, but still…) so they can really only assist 1 ship's construction at once when coming from another ship. Gantries don't need other ships' resource input. In fact they supply a lot of the resources the other ships use. You next points: The Minbari aren't THAT stupid regarding the Drakh, and I need to think about Shadow warship hacking…

REVIEW!


	15. Olive Branches and Kosh Speaking

A/N: By my calculations, the Coalition can multiply their forces enough to defeat the whole B5 sector of Andromeda within a few months of arriving if they had free access to Ship Gantry "mitosis".

Did anyone else think, when watching the "Evolution" or whatever it's called video from Heart of the Swarm (where Zeratul tells of the Primal Zerg) that Zeratul seems to enjoy flying enough that he might like to have a ride (with leased armour for inertial protection sot aht he doesn't have to think about it too hard) on the ever-popular "Mavor Express" someday?

Let's be frank about this. If the Coalition had reacted the way it probably would have to the Batarian culture without the rose glasses of the Infinite War, that race would have in large part been history inside of a day after the Coalition finished analyzing the data on them. Slavers in this galaxy will NOT repeat NOT be seen through rose glasses. Also, the moment Batarian space goes silent after the Reaper invasion back in the Milky Way… the Coalition will pull its head out of its ass and realize what the role of "Top Dog" entails, including protecting the less advanced races from parasites.

Sorry for slow update, been lazy lately so real life hasn't been handled as efficiently as I'm used to, so more time there equals less time writing, plus a bout of de-motiviation and here we are.

* * *

Chapter 15: Olive Branches and Kosh Speaking

_Babylon Five, Local date June 12, 2260, Coalition date May 23, 3872_

Sheridan and Brindley both watched glumly from the B5 C&C's screens as the half-deployed (the size didn't require a full deployment) Ship Gantry fixed the ship up before their very eyes. It was erasing damage from the hull seemingly effortlessly and without the crew even needing to be evacuated, other than a few cases of "Get your head out of that maintenance hatch you're trying to use so that we can fix the problem!". Xavier had walked up next to them while they watched the camera feed intently "Any questions, gentlemen? If you do, ask now, because the transit will only take as long as you take to dock with us."

"How did you know Clark was being influenced by the Shadows?"

"Being a lost soul given a lot of subjective time to wander the multi-verse and flip through time like a book makes you learn a lot." Commander T'Soni said blandly. When Colonel Christov snorted in derision, she rolled her eyes at him "I am not joking, I only took this body back from its stasis pod very recently."

"Maybe I shouldn't let myself get astonished so often by you Coalition people, but it seems impossible at present…" Christov mumbled after a moment of staring.

Brindley smiled at his old friend, then turned toward the Coalition people "The same goes for me, Grand Crusader, Ambassador… would you mind telling us about some of your history?"

"That would involve telling you where we came from if we wanted to make things clear, but know that the three human factions of the Coalition fought a war of annihilation against each other for a very long time. We united when we were threatened from the outside, and the alliance stuck once we realized we were all just people. War fatigue had a lot to do with it, almost no one remembered the times before the war, one of the first things children were taught would be how to reach evacuation craft… Everyone had had enough, and when understanding that the war had become pointless was combined with a good reason to be at peace, we took it."

"How long did the war go on for? Sixty years?" Brindley took a shot at it, thinking it was reasonable with the claim that few remembered the pre-war days, presuming these humans had a similar lifespan to Earth humans. He was in for a nasty shock.

Xavier and Liara burst out laughing and it took a few moments before the latter stopped "Multiply by twenty." Once jaws had finished dropping, she continued with "I served the Cybran Nation for eight hundred of those twelve hundred years, and Xavier was a veteran of the last one hundred and fifty, fighting for the Aeon Illuminate. The average death rate of the war, because we were so efficient at civilian evacuations, was only nine mega-deaths per day from the war itself. Don't tell anyone though, I look forward to deflating some Minbari egos when we have to work together to defeat the Shadows, Vorlons or whoever else tries to subjugate or destroy all of us relatively young races."

Brindley grimaced, although he personally kind of liked the idea of flinging Minbari superiority back in their faces. "I don't think anyone on Earth would believe us anyways, we'd probably just get thrown into an asylum." He decided to leave out the dry _I'm sure you understand why I do not particularly desire that outcome?_

The green-haired woman smiled "That's good, I can't wait to show up some of the more arrogant Minbari who we are going to encounter. Now, let's talk about the Shadow warships and the data we gained in our last battle."

"Oh, right, the Minbari gave us what information they had from their last war a thousand years ago… there were never reports of any secondary armament on the ships then…" Sheridan said partly for Brindley to hear.

"Did the Shadow fighters make their secondary armaments redundant in the last war?" Xavier hypothesized. "There is no need to push reactor output above standard to feed all guns and propulsion at the same time if that's the case. From our combat analysis Shadow fighter craft could outperform any local fighter you supplied us with the stats of." He didn't mention how the science lab on the _Surveyor_ was studying the Shadow hull material. They had observed how it tried to digest anything it touched despite its cells mostly having thick secondary walls. Structural field technology however had precluded that the same way they had generally essentially prevented other reaction-with-target attacks, like Zerg chemical weapons. Before structural fields were invented, a relatively weak base would be rapidly nanolathed at the site of contamination and used to neutralize the powerful acidic chemical solution, which despite the acid resistance of even modern armour could still do some damage over time. There was no doubt that, if not for structural fields, Zerg weaponry would actually do some real damage even to _modern_ Coalition armour. It seemed structural fields or similar systems—i.e. bio-"electric" fields—were a very decisive pivotal point in arms races between factions or races.

Sheridan grimaced "That sounds plausible… no, probable. We will have to investigate further."

There was a moment of silence before Xavier said, reading the text that had just popped up on his HUD, projected from the front side of his armour's neck now that he had his helmet off "The repairs are more than sixty percent complete, any other questions, gentlemen?"

"Many, of course." Brindley said "But what was it that caused the Coalition to unite in peace?"

"The Seraphim Imperium invaded, and it was with the aid of the Seraphim Separatists that we turned the tide and pushed them back into the universe they'd come from."

"_Inter-universal warfare?_" The B5 and Earth Alliance people asked simultaneously.

"Not quite, our two realities are quite close together, so when we accidentally created the conditions to bridge the two, they took it and retaliated for us wiping out one of their colonies, the one situated on their old homeworld before they fled it, near the beginning of the Infinite War. By the end of the Seraphim War almost no one wanted another war of annihilation, although nationalist feelings were still strong. We've got a lot more blending now though, the younger generations tend to find each other fascinating…"

He trailed off, thinking morbidly of what Hannah had told him about the hundreds of thousands of pieces of disapproving mail his younger son apparently got from a very small percentage of older Cybrans. Most of the Cybrans responsible lived on Procyon, and they had (mostly) eloquently expressed their contempt for him romancing a Quarian (the first Cybran to do so) given the almost absurd Cybran historical similarity to the Geth. He had a bad feeling suddenly that James might not have told Tali about that yet and that it would be a nasty surprise if they ran into such people on the streets of Procyon. "So anyways we sealed up the Rift that had allowed them to travel between the two realities and now we live together in peace. There are other factions we have contact with, but a healthy bit of nationalism helps us compete among ourselves, maintaining the edge we have over our neighbours." In other words, _don't fuck with us and we won't crush you_.

It was typically considered before Xavier left on this expedition that there were three major powers in the Milky Way, ranked in the order of the Coalition, the New Covenant and the Citadel. In the case of everyday economic _output_, the ranking in the Milky Way was currently Citadel, Coalition (due to very low wastage), New Covenant, and the scattered other powers. In the case of economic _capacity_, it was Coalition (effectively unlimited), Citadel, New Covenant. Available naval firepower (calculating based on energy output) had the order be New Covenant, Coalition, Citadel. _Potential_ firepower, well, that was a foregone conclusion… except the Coalition had to balance the Covenant by use of sheer numbers.

"So… who are your neighbours?" Brindley tried to push.

Xavier decided to let this information loose "The New Covenant and the Citadel Council. I would be astonished if you'd heard of them."

"I haven't, and I'm hoping I don't need to anytime in the near future." Brindley replied.

"Well, I recommend you get onto the shuttle back to the ship, repairs will be done soon, then we can dock and you can get to Earth in a literal flash."

It had taken a short while (read: ten minutes) to get one of the Earth Force destroyers back into working order. Brindley was not impressed, nor alarmed for that matter. No, he was morbidly fascinated with the implications. Well, at least these people looked human, however alien they might act, if they were genetically related enough, then at least humanity as an entity would survive, and at least someone human out there was powerful enough to hold their own. It was a bitter understanding, but the general accepted. From the set of his old friend's jaw, he could tell that Christov had also accepted the sorry reality.

* * *

_Gemini, en route to CSC Surveyor, near Babylon Five, Local date June 12, 2260, Coalition date May 23, 3872_

Meanwhile, Commander T'Soni and Xavier were reviewing the results Miranda and the science crew had sent to them as they soared toward the _Surveyor_ in their _Gemini_ shuttle. "Wish we could park more ships around each half-baked warship without the Rovers getting in each other's way…" Liara said grimly, her red eyes flicking over the information on the holographic screen with a grimace.

"Shadow weapons manage to have their pulse length in their beam be just under half a second each and fire either three or four pulse cycles per charge depending on weapon class, huh? Odd that they'd be so exact and vary so little in properties other than yield between the various classes of their weapons." Xavier groused. To count as burst damage against structural fields something usually needs to be an absolute maximum of about one hundred milliseconds with refractory" That meant less than 1/5 of the peak energy pressure "of at least five milliseconds in and between peak energy pressures even with the fields pushing the detonation or whatever away in flux… "So we're taking continuous beam type damage, we'll want heavier ships and more beefed-up shields to withstand their ship-to-ship weapons fire reliably then. Fortunately we can hurt them, and hurt them badly, mostly with use of our starfighters." It was true that the Coalition had a gross advantage over the locals in starfighters, compensating for the fact that their capital ships didn't quite match up in firepower.

"Their recharge rates aren't half bad either, firing every ten seconds or so… better than Covenant Plasma Projectors." Liara continued the train of thought "But at least those were short-pulse weapons that delivered a widely spaced series of sharp hammer-blows that structural fields and our shields could overcharge to reduce sharply… or we would have been forced to expand our shipyard count a lot to fight them, which could have destabilized things within the Coalition." It had been considered a popular joke among the denizens of the Cybran worlds located in ostensibly Covenant Space that they went completely undetected. The Covenant had no idea where many of the raids on their supply lines came from, and had never detected any of the colonies that had moved underground when the front moved through the system. They had managed to occupy much of Cybran space, but the Coalition had been slowly bleeding the Covenant dry while trying to find a way to incite some sort of uprising within the Covenant so that they didn't need to destroy quite so many high-end warships that could be very useful against the Reapers. In the end, they found a good incitation.

"If only we didn't have to collect so much damned data… if the locals had more information…" Xavier sighed, looking at the report of the last battle with the Shadows.

Liara snorted "You mean if the Vorlons had been more forthcoming, we could have saved ourselves a lot of ships by quantum-jumping all over the place every minute."

"Yeah. Well, we do have a slight advantage in main armament range though, our lasers are a bit faster than their modulated particle beams, so at long range, upward of one hundred thousand kilometres, we'll be able to dodge most of their fire simply by flight times even without doing more than altering forward velocity. We won't be hitting them accurately with return fire though, and against unshielded, non-fielded, extremely heavily armoured warships hitting some non-critical section with relatively short contact times of our lasers won't cut it. We would need to wait for them to jump in on our faces and smash it with a hammer if we want to decide the engagement if we're relying on capital ships. Mavors' guided shells are the only other option for striking at that sort of range, but flight times would be enough they'd probably shoot them down with anti-fighter batteries. The way we prevented the Covenant from jumping in on our faces in the last war with our shutting of Slipspace portals as soon as they tried opening them near us, but the Shadows from what we've seen don't use portals. Even with our drives and the accelerations we can pull, the Shadows can still target us accurately enough to get consistent weapons contact with us at mid-range, and against our protective technologies, that's actually effective… not like raw heavy armour where you need to hit something actually important. The sad thing is that it means we _need_ to at least close to mid range, ten thousand klicks, for a decent slugfest with all our primary _and_ secondary anti-ship weapons. Our Ravagers would do a LOT of accurate damage very quickly if we ever entered close-range or especially ramming range combat…" That meant under 500 kilometres or under 10 kilometres respectively. "…but they're not really useful at anything over a thousand or so kilometres. I think our doctrine in combating the Shadows should either be to swarm them with massed starfighters while our warships stand outside their effective range or to wade in with everything in a firefight at such close range the Shadows would need to shoot through each other to get at us. I know they're the two extremes, but they are the best options to attain victory from what I can see."

"That sounds strategically, well, sound to me. I'm concerned that the three gates we've assembled on this end haven't been able to receive any signals yet from the QGN, the bridge should be almost complete so they should be able to at least get a poor signal through, something probably went wrong, very wrong."

He knew exactly what she meant "You don't think…?"

"It seems the time John bought his cycle with the destruction of that Batarian relay finally ran out." The green-haired woman said grimly.

"Well, that was one of the contingencies we prepared for, wasn't it?"

"Yes, but I think we've already failed at keeping our presence low-key while we multiply our fleets." Her mouth quirked in a soft smile.

He shrugged "Then we adapt, it's what we've had to do for millennia to not get wiped out by other life forms."

"It will be interesting to explain to Ambassador Kosh exactly what is so wrong with his people's philosophy, I think. I expect him to be ready to brief Sheridan regarding the Shadow planet-killer vessels shortly after we return from Earth."

* * *

A/N: Not sure if what I'm about to say about Quantum Jumping is ret-conning of previous writing, but it is necessary to address some issues.

* * *

_Andromeda-Sol System, Local date June 12, 2260, Coalition date May 23, 3872_

"The Forerunners were always good at grand, slow gestures." Xavier said as they Quantum-Jumped into the system designated Andromeda-Sol. "Why bother making this system so like Milky Way-Sol? Why couldn't they have pulled a 'Homeworld'-style thing instead?" That video game series, well, one based on the ancient games in spirit at least, had had a resurgence back in Xavier's youth and he'd played many of the different campaigns available…

"I don't know, they were on average controlling idiots on par with the Vorlons from what my Librarian-cycle-replica told me, she and John were some of the few competent ones. If the war effort hadn't been so dependent on the two of them, they'd probably have been prosecuted as ideological rebels. Well, Brindley's begun broadcasting…" Commander T'Soni said, the last part roughly ten seconds after the fact as the Omega destroyer slung under the hull of the much larger _Surveyor_ had began broadcasting on all sorts of frequencies. The delay between arrival and broadcasting was probably due to the occurrence of an OMFGBBQSAUCE moment realizing they just went from point A to point B in an _instant_, objectively and subjectively.

It would be a whole minute before the ship could Quantum Jump again, one of the more peculiar traits of Quantum Jump Drives was that they had a minimum _system_ recharge time. It was one of the reasons why short-range jumps tended to use warp, Mass Effect or Slipspace, to make sure the Quantum Jump Drive stayed fresh and ready for use. Multiple drive cores did however cut down on recharge time for longer-range jumps with larger-mass vessels where charging of a single core would take more than the minimum time, which with current technology was stuck at one minute. Hence it was easier for larger ships to make a series of long-range jumps with multiple cores fitted, given recharge time was a cube root relative to distance, logarithmic to the mass of the transported object, and inverse to the number of cores. Incidentally, the system realignment time for anything within the same structural field was a major reason why Central Gate _Complexes_ actually existed, and why, during evacuations, civilian vehicles would always link themselves together or park many-at-a-time within each gate before each energized each time.

Brindley's transmission had been fairly simple, given they'd literally appeared out of nowhere inside Andromeda-Mars orbit "This is General Christopher Brindley, to all Earth Alliance Forces, do not fire repeat DO NOT fire, this is a non-hostile approach. All Earth Alliance forces, do not approach closer than twenty thousand kilometres!"

Needless to say, the commander of the approaching patrol was less than impressed and there was a brief exchange of words before Brindley asked the _Surveyor_ if they could "beam" him onto the Earth Alliance ships holding distance at 25,000 kilometres. The response was him being told to wait, followed by Commander T'Soni walking out of an airlock, exiting the structural fields' coverage, and teleporting herself onto Brindley's bridge before psi-scanning the target area (aka clairvoyance or scrying), locking on, and teleporting again. Quantum Teleporters were usually quite short-ranged compared to Quantum Gates or ACU Recall Systems, mostly because neither initial location nor destination were generally within the smallest structural field bubble the machine was situated in. That was why Commander T'Soni had to do it herself… and get gawked at by a stunned Earth Alliance bridge crew. "GET ME EARTH COMMAND!" Brindley's roar made half the shocked crew jump a bit in their seats before the communications officer rushed to obey. "Thank you, Commander T'Soni." The general said politely.

"Not a problem, this new war with the Centauri, on the other hand… we will screen you from the worst of the effects, because that race needs to be taught humility, but most of dealing with the aftermath will still be up to your Earth Alliance. We will meet again." With that, she vanished from the bridge before security could try anything.

After she got in through the open airlock door and it cycled, she announced via the internal comm. from the elevator she was now taking "I'm back."

Xavier's reply was "Good, they have nine more ships one minute out in Slipspace, given their current speeds. I'm pulling us out immediately unless you have objections."

"The alternative is jumping out just as they jump in, since we aren't looking for a massacre. No, that would be too much bullying for now, we can do something more insidious, pull up all our stealth and camouflage systems and then jump." In other words, they were going to disappear from Earth Alliance sensors practically without warning or jump emissions profile. _If it scared Earth Force, so be it._ Both experienced ACU pilots thought.

* * *

_Babylon Five, Local date June 12, 2260, Coalition date May 23, 3872_

After they jumped back to B5 space, Xavier suddenly asked "If my son has had many pre-incarnations, what about his mother and I?"

"Hannah was a constant, you… you were not."

Xavier grimaced, he'd expected that. "Are there any other potential men for Hannah around in this time period?"

"You know, I expected you to ask all this much earlier, practically as soon as we got settled over here."

"I was debating doing so or not, and decided it wasn't my place to pry. But just now you started talking about my son's previous incarnations, one that we both KNOW I wasn't necessarily his father for, so I wanted to ask, besides, we're just waiting on Kosh right now anyways…"

The green-haired woman shifted her hair pattern to cover her eyes from improperly polarized viewers and mumbled "Well, it's complicated… sometimes it was modified parthenogenesis, but most of the time a decent guy tended to do the fertilization. Usually the twins are raised without a father though… since the guys are crap at surviving when they're working to protect her from harm. You're one of a few prospects she has had so far for someone to share her life with, and you're the only one currently alive. That doesn't mean she won't dump your ass and open new options if you decide to be a douche though."

He shrugged "That's not a problem to me. If I get bad enough for her to dump me then I'd deserve it, other than if it's a dumping shouted while she's in labour." He had just remembered the amount of noise that had pierced the walls of the waiting room one time his mother had been giving birth to a younger brother of his. Fathers were generally banned from Aeon delivery rooms if the birth wasn't expected to be completely smooth—the norm now that human genetic modification meant babies had somewhat smaller heads at birth and were overall smaller than before the Quantum Age—for the simple fact that, according to signs that were always posted on delivery room doors: "Telekinetic castration probability for fathers during rough births is intolerably high, and newly-minted fathers should be concerned about changing nappies instead of when they're going to get their balls re-installed."

"It went quite smoothly when the twins were born, although she was still wishing you were there so that you could hold her hand."

Xavier scowled "Don't remind me of how badly I failed."

"No, it had to be that way to make sure time ran its course, I wish I could have awoken you earlier, but…"

The Grand Crusader threw his arms up in exasperation "I know, blame the timeline, huh? Well, it's a good way to feel good about ourselves and whatever we happened to have done, I suppose."

* * *

_Ten hours later…_

The Legendary Commander's expectation was not quite correct. Kosh wasn't ready to talk until more than ten hours after the _Surveyor_'s return from Andromeda-Sol. And when he did talk, it was an hour after recon units on the Vorlon-Shadow border reported the resuming of the massed Shadow offensive into Vorlon space. He began by calling Sheridan to his quarters for a chat, a chat to which Commander T'Soni also showed up, having overheard the psionic call loud and clear. Kosh accepted her presence, expecting her to come when she heard the call he had given, although he hadn't quite expected her to be towing Grand Crusader Fran.

"You're looking better, Ambassador, that's good." She noted his bio-synthetic-fusion suit material had repaired the encounter suit. _The tendency of old races to show off is almost overwhelming, I hope the Coalition never sinks low enough to try biological… well… everything, like so many other advanced races do just to look impressive to the younger races…_

Kosh bowed his head slightly "It is twice now."

Sheridan seemed to think it was about how twice people had tried to kill him within three years, but Commander T'Soni cut Kosh off before he could go further "Yes, twice the Vorlon Empire nearly fell, and twice only timely intervention from Humans or derived races saved them momentarily."

Kosh seemed to huff angrily, then sigh, while Sheridan had a grave frown of thought on his face since the Minbari weren't a race derived from Humans, well, other than Sinclair-Valen, right? "The Empire is again losing, the Shadows have prevailed. The three-edged sword is levelled at our throats." His translator stated.

"What's the status of the Vorlons? How long can they hold out?" Sheridan asked grimly.

"The ones called the Shadows broke the agreement. They act as is their nature, we have been surprised and the circle has been broken." Kosh didn't answer Sheridan's question other than basically saying the Vorlons weren't doing so great.

Commander T'Soni snorted "No, it is as it was, as it should have been, as you would have known had you not had to edit the documents you took back in time to correspond to the documents you yourself once delivered to your people."

The Vorlon snorted "You insist the circle's truth is immutable."

"Yes, time is objective, but the evidence of its passing can be very subjective."

"Do you get the impression I'm a fourth wheel here?" Xavier joked toward Sheridan.

The technically much younger but older-looking man grimaced "Only if I'm the third wheel."

The Vorlon's suit iris narrowed a bit before Commander T'Soni continued "Regardless, _Babylon Five_ is about to become the centre of probably the most important war in this sector's maturation. Your people are failing, and the whole area is destabilized, it is time for the pebbles to assemble to bring down the mountains that would stifle them."

"Perhaps not so much bring down as roll back, Commander." Sheridan toned the sharp threat-like jab that had just been given by Commander T'Soni down a good bit "Still, the fact that the Shadows don't have a stable counterweight to keep them from lashing out is a problem." They all knew what that meant, if the Coalition engaged the Shadows openly _again_ the sector could be in for a hell of a lot MORE trouble since the Shadows would probably _completely_ freak out (not just freak out enough to take time off to think) at the coming of a new, strong opponent and raze most of the sector in the ensuing clashes. "Also, what are we supposed to do about these Shadow planet-killer weapons we've heard about?"

"Observe." Kosh said before his eyepiece began to glow, the glow halted before it could become blinding though… "Why?"

_YOU ARE AN IDIOT. WHAT IF DELENN IS TAKING A SWIM OR SOMETHING RIGHT NOW AND DROWNS BECAUSE OF THIS RANDOM PSI-SUMMON?_ The green-haired woman's glare seemed to make Kosh cringe a bit as she mind-shouted at him after basically grabbing the back of his mind's collar while he was reaching out to Delenn. At the same time she was telling the Captain the facts "Sheridan, he's about to take you into a psychic conference state, and he's reaching through the Triluminary connection to Delenn to call her for a briefing, I'm telling him to make sure she doesn't drown by going still in the water if she's swimming or something right now. We can call her in a way that she can refuse the signal, if you don't mind. Also, it would have been nice if you'd let Sheridan know what's happening before you started the conference process."

"She agrees." Kosh rumbled after a moment, and his iris did seem to glow brighter this time until Sheridan had to close his eyes, a moment later the almost painful glow faded abruptly. When he opened his eyes, he was standing next to Delenn in an immense room with low ambient light that seemed to come from everywhere at once. She was just opening her eyes, while across from them stood Kosh wearing the form of David Sheridan. To one side of the locals, Xavier Fran and Commander T'Soni stood, looking almost bored.

Delenn said after a moment "What about the other telepaths in our vicinities?"

"They will not be able to intrude upon us. I and the Commander shall ensure that." Kosh said in a much more straightforward voice than normal, likely as it was his mind-voice and not translator talking. "What matters is that there was a lot I wanted to tell you, but I was afraid of changing the circle… though it has already been changed irreparably from what we thought it was." He chuckled to himself a bit as if at an inside joke "Commander T'Soni has told me that I have 'severe mental arthritis', in other words, that I was too stiff, and she was right. My people are losing steadily, and we will not be long for the great journey. You however still must know the truth, though I have told you it is a three-edged sword, your truth, my truth, and the truth." He turned his head toward Commander T'Soni "I gained a new appreciation of one of my people's oldest idioms with your arrival, thank you for that."

The Gardevoir bowed her head momentarily in acknowledgement and said "Any time."

After a second of quiet John asked "What is the truth we must be made aware of?"

"The Shadows" Kosh almost struggled with not making a sniping comment at their mentality, but he suppressed the ingrained urge to do so and felt a momentary sense of triumph "feel that they are doing the best thing for the younger races by promoting conflict. That is why they ask the question 'What do you want?' because in the end that questions brings a terrible price. They believe that selection by conflict brings strength. The Vorlons believe the opposite is true. 'Who are you' leads to understanding and enlightenment."

"Opposite sides of the coin that refuse to see or understand the other's view and thus continue fighting over who is right." Xavier summarized

Sheridan sighed at the confirmation of something he'd suspected for a while now given the radically different ideologies of the two sides "So this whole mess, and the previous wars between the Vorlons and Shadows, is a _pissing contest_?"

Xavier cut in before Kosh could speak "Remember, Captain Sheridan, WAR is an acronym for We Are Right, even greed or envy-fuelled wars are a case of the aggressor believing they have a right to whatever it is they want."

Kosh seemed a bit agitated "Yes, but still, you don't understand, John, we want what's best for all of you. You need our wisdom and guidance so that you don't make the same mistakes we did…" He seemed to shrink in upon himself a bit as he continued the thought-speech softly "and what painful mistakes those were."

"If they don't learn how to avoid mistakes on their own and have you coddling them all the time, they'll never really understand any lessons you might be trying to teach. The Shadows have taken to interfering instead of protecting or guiding, and no one is currently in place to stop them. Sooner or later children must become independent of their parents or guardians, Kosh." She turned away from the Vorlon toward John Sheridan "I've spoken to him several times, but he's barely changing slowly, which is quite normal for old beings, but still, it's a bit irksome…"

"You're going to have to deal with this yourselves, Johnny. My people are leaving for the Rim soon and there will be only your fellow races and the Coalition to aid you. You and yours will have to make the difference." Commander T'Soni decided to hold onto her knowledge of what the Rim really was, because they needed Kosh to get to the important issues of defeating Shadow planet-killers. There wasn't enough time to deal with the backlash yet, although she would tell Kosh as this conversation ended.

"Abandonment when things get difficult, when we need you the most, hmm?" Delenn's confrontational tone was noted by all, as well as her anger at what Kosh was saying. "Quitters." That cleared the air a bit, she was not angry at the Vorlons as a race, but at the behaviour they were showing… Kosh's adopted visage showed relief at that.

"I will stay, for a while. If I do not, John will go to Z'ha'dum and he will die." David Sheridan's form turned and pointed into the darkness "For now, this is your problem." He pointed at a large cloud, which floated closer, revealing that its outline was in fact made up of a vast number of smaller vessels. "The devices mounted in the smaller vessels can be used to absorb ambient energy to increase their power supply, to create a feeling of cold, which most beings associate with dread. The standard Shadow planet-killer is a terror weapon, only brought in once most resistance is neutralized. It can fragment itself to cover most of a planet with its subunit ships, before deploying missiles that would, using hyperspace phasing and re-entry, drill in moments into the basal layers of the tectonic plates and detonate, fragmenting the plates and causing massive global tectonic activity. This remote powering of hyperspace transits is why they actually need the ambient energy gathering device and why it needs to be near something with a good bit of heat to work well enough to fire. A ship that small wouldn't mount enough reactors to do that remote control thing reliably." Popular belief among younger races that witnessed such attacks said the missiles drilled into the planetary cores, which was total bullshit as weapons sufficient to cause global tectonic destabilization from the core would be more likely to crack the planet in half. "This would render the planet uninhabitable and most probably disrupt emergency bunkers, thus eradicating the populace yet not making it excessively difficult for the Shadows to terraform the world for their own uses."

"Sounds fun. So, how do we blow this thing up other than destroying ALL of its constituents?" Commander T'Soni asked.

"I was getting to that. Some of these vessels, rather larger than the rest, are command platforms, destroying more than seventy percent of them should cause the whole control system to collapse, effectively paralyzing the remainder of the cloud and allowing the rest of it to be destroyed with ease. Alternatively, destroying the four primary control vessels that are responsible for the hyperspace drives will reduce the command platform destruction requirement by roughly ten percent per primary control vessel. Now, be warned that although all the vessels are well-armed for their size due to no need for hyperspace, destroying a command platform should render the vessels slaved to it to become disorganized and severely reduce their combat efficiency. The fewer command platforms or primary control vessels nearby, the less organized the resistance the small ships can put up. They are, however, still dangerous." The display before them zoomed in on one of the smallest vessels, which had very distinct dorsal and ventral sides with four turrets on the topside and a ball-like protrusion at the front that was a turret for a Shadow particle beam. "Each one mounts four missile tubes in its bow and one Class 1 particle beam, plus four anti-fighter batteries, but there are nineteen of these per command platform, and two hundred command platforms."

Delenn started spouting expletives, then , noticing John staring at her, blushed and said in a very small voice "Thought-speech doesn't have language constraints, we understand it as whatever language we ourselves think in, right…" He just smiled at her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. Kosh smiled at causing the usually very staid Delenn to lose her composure, then grimaced at the reason for it.

The view shifted to a rather larger type of vessel than the last one "Command platforms come with a Class Two particle beam and six anti-fighter batteries, the same four missile tubes but much heavier armour characterize them, they're about par with Shadow Frigate-analogues weapon-wise not counting the missiles but inferior in basically every other aspect except armour where they are superior. The primary control vessels however are even heavier than Shadow battleship-analogue battle-crabs, and we aren't quite sure if they vary between death clouds or not. Fortunately, the Shadows only have five death clouds and we have destroyed one." Kosh still looked very grim, and for good reasons too.

"We will aid you in the coming conflict to match their overwhelming numbers."

"Excellent, for the Drakh, or Shadows for that matter cannot seem to detect your forces accurately without specialized sensor ships, at least, the sensors on their light and medium warships cannot pick you up reliably." Kosh intoned. "This will be a great boon to the side of the younger races, even though most of my people have yet to understand or appreciate you."

"What are the Drakh?" Delenn asked.

"The ones who have attacked your people, what you all called the Black Arrow faction. They are nomadic now, after their homeworld was destroyed in the last war, and are fully devoted to the teachings of the Shadows. The spilling of blood is practically their life. Against them and their masters, the costs of the coming war will be high, even with the Coalition on your side, more help is still highly desirable."

"We will get that help, I will call all our allies together for a conference at B5 and we shall rally an army to fight the darkness."

"The circle I had known was revealed to either be false or shattered, I do not know if your army can prevail. They will try to destroy you before your meeting can take place."

"The Coalition forces available will be on-hand to screen Babylon 5 from attack for at least a while given apparent Shadow dependence on dedicated sensor ships to pick us up at reasonable ranges. The tactical flexibility we have now that we are not focused on gathering information will let us take those sensor ships out and if we subsequently keep to longer range combat we can wear them down well before they would wear us down when fighting in equal numbers." That meant prepping quite a bunch of ships for rolling broadsides before jumping them in right next to Shadow sensor ships on suicide missions to take them out.

"Speaking of destinies… why didn't your people send someone to check up on you when the Shadows attacked you?"

Kosh actually had his avatar chuckle at that "Well, I didn't almost die this time, that's probably the most important part, but also… they didn't really need to."

Sheridan began slowly, but then sped up as he spoke "…Because once this so-called circle had been altered from the point of view of most Vorlons, they were too scared to do anything for fear that—"

"—It would get fucked up even further?" Kosh finished for him. Delenn, Sheridan and Xavier stared, Xavier the first among them to recover as Kosh continued "Yes, we Vorlons are capable of using quite foul language, although our translators usually, screen it out for image purposes." He had a feeling that most of those present would not appreciate if he gave a good translation of what he'd been yelling while fighting those three Shadows back then. Some of the younger races' curse words and terms did give him pause sometimes as he tried to understand their origins and reasoning, but that didn't mean he couldn't use them. "Johnny is entirely correct, they hope I will return the circle to what I thought we knew to be true, they are, as you would say, certifiable. When the Coalition came, the change was permanent."

"So, do you think we can beat the Shadows?"

"Your allies will give you a fighting chance, particularly if you give the Coalition some time. Their technology is very powerful, but the time you have before it all begins may not be quite enough. The Shadows will not interfere unless they feel threatened, and after the last battle before the pause in the Shadow offensive, well… Even disregarding that, your planned alliance is already a threat to them. It is not the way chaos works."

Sheridan chose to vent his anger a bit instead of letting it fade "Well they can go shove it, what we do is our own choice, not the Shadows', or yours, or that of anyone else who tries to control us." He softened a bit after that bit of catharsis "We will follow our own rules that govern us. Yes, we will make mistakes, but we will learn from them and deal with them. Kosh, it's time for the children to leave the house to become independent. The parents can only hope for the best and that they have taught the children enough for them to make it on their own."

Kosh nodded slowly "I begin to understand. Many of my kind do not, but I am beginning to."

The avatar of Commander T'Soni spoke up "Before you cut this connection, Kosh, I think we should talk a bit about the Rim."

Kosh, still using the avatar of David Sheridan, gaped briefly before saying "John, Delenn, I do not believe this is something for you to hear—"

"Kosh, I don't think pushing them out is necessary, but… I suppose… yeah, this could destabilize this whole sector if someone sees it from their minds in an unguarded moment. Are you okay with this?" Commander T'Soni looked to the two locals, who nodded before vanishing from the mindscape. "Alright, it is only us now, Kosh, I'm not too sure about you telling your people this either, it could bring down the sky even earlier than we anticipated."

"I don't think you should tell me then. Tell me when my people are about to depart for the Rim, if you still want to by then. Some things… are better not known."

* * *

A/N: Review Replies!

**KleverKilva**: Yes, the Coalition can get very, very nasty if you push them far enough for them to declare total war against you (we are talking about doing something in par with firing a Halo, which incidentally would fail to destroy the Coalition mostly due to the Cybran Network and the number of people on it, translating into potential to re-download into robotic forms pending restoration of organic forms and civilization). Thanks for the praise.

**Just a Crazy-Man**: Thank you.

**Spacebar**: One of the two guys I look forward to seeing the reviews of the most… on this series (because only Nenfaer gives long reviews on the SI Archives series, which is much darker and grittier than this universe). I incorporated your proposed solution to some degree here, and would like to thank you for your praise and the thought experiment we shared.

**Nenfaer**: Addressed your concerns here, I think, to some degree or another.

**DaLintyMan**: Ground combat will be practically non-existent until the Sinhindrea do something drastic, AFTER they arrive. How much ground combat did we ever see in B5? Not much… sadly.

**Ciupacapra**: Thank you.

REVIEW!


	16. Ships And Lost Souls

A/N: **Sorry, I decided that the Rim Reveal (seemed funny when I wrote Rim Job the first time) was going to wait a bit until the Vorlons are preparing to leave for it, then nail their balls to the wall with the reveal.**

This update is hot off the press—1 day gap—compared to the last one, 23 days gap, I hope I'm not screwing up too badly by not listening for enough feedback before slamming it down. Most of the more decisive feedback (Spacebar & Nenfaer) has already been posted so I can assume most of the bigger issues were covered.

* * *

Chapter 16: Ships And Lost Souls

_Babylon Five, Local date June 13, 2260, Coalition date May 24, 3872_

Although neither said it, both Liara and Kosh knew that the other was relieved as they exited the mindscape. Both knew why the other was so relieved, Kosh because it could destabilize his whole people to know what the Rim was before they got there, and Liara because they wouldn't antagonize yet another major local power. However, only Kosh was momentarily surprised to hear Xavier say with a grimace "I'm glad you chose not to know the truth this time."

"You know?" The Vorlon asked a moment after Sheridan had done the same.

"Yes."

Kosh rumbled in a low sigh as Sheridan said "Well, clearly, you're not going to be telling us, maybe we should get back to work, you were discussing some designs with each other last time? That's if Kosh has nothing more to tell us…"

They all looked at the Vorlon, who bowed his head slightly before saying "We will leave, but I will stay."

"Okay then… we should get to work." Commander T'Soni announced. The meeting dispersed shortly thereafter.

While walking Xavier back to his shuttle, Commander T'Soni decided to bring up a certain topic with the father of her ex-husband. "How is the investigation into the Shadow hull material going?"

"Not as well as we would wish, we can accurately record its responses to various weapons, but when we just let it grow with lots of nutrients it just forms a nondescript ovoid vessel so far. It seems to be slowly developing several particle weapons near the bow along its lateral plane of symmetry, and is emitting psychic requests for a mind to link up with it to teach it. I suspect modification from shipyard organisms may be necessary to make it as dependent on a living CPU as the ships we've seen to date, and to induce it to grow spines with anti-fighter batteries. We haven't figured out what induces it yet from genomic analysis, but we're slowly getting there despite the genetic self-destruct mechanisms we've been seeing and the unfamiliar DNA code. The growing ship also seems to have a sort of consciousness, unlike the ships we've seen so far which have none. We've been shielding it from the psychic emissions of the Shadows, which seem to permeate this sector, so it hasn't tried to follow any of their directives yet."

"Maybe I should have a talk with the ship then, see what its instincts are and all that, see how genetically programmed the craft is…"

"I think that would be quite helpful, since I don't trust any of the rest of us to have enough psychic might to stop us from getting hurt if it lashes out at us in the mind-space."

"Heh, there are a few entities out there strong enough to hold against Shadow fleets, but I think I can handle one young ship just fine. I do think you'd be enough given the original minds of the ships are incredibly vulnerable to psychic powers, the main reason the Shadows use the locals, who are harder to target and damage telepathically than the big ship hull, as CPUs in the first place."

"Well that's just great, let's try it out sometime." Sometimes, Xavier wished Commander T'Soni would just info-dump on him all at once instead of this continuous beam. It would be overall less of a pain if she did it all at once, but then again, the amount of information might just be too much for one sitting.

* * *

_Uninhabited System near B5, Local date June 13, 2260, Coalition date May 24, 3872_

It turned out that the growing Shadow ship was like an infant in its mentality, appearing to them in the mindscape as a nondescript blob that was searching for pieces it could incorporate into its identity. Its first request was a telepathic nudge asking for information, for purpose, for understanding. Xavier, Miranda, Jack, Mirala, Ahn and Kelly (basically all the psi-capable crew members) looked around at each other before deciding Kelly was the best option as she had the easiest childhood and was least likely to scar the Shadow ship with the contents of her mind.

A moment after showing most of her mind to the Shadow warship via psychic projection, Kelly found herself looking at a small purple-haired child sitting on the floor of the mindscape where the blob had been. "Impressive." Commander T'Soni said. "I was under the impression that the Shadow ships typically had insectoid mental avatars?"

"What's she talking about?" The Shadow ship looked away from the green-haired female and asked the orange-haired one that had taught it so much in a mere moment. "Who am I?" Most of the human avatars in the mindscape blinked, while Commander T'Soni privately thought _Kosh would probably faint if he heard it ask that._

"That is a long story, little one, are you sure you wish to hear it right now?" Xavier asked, sensing no hostile intent whatsoever from the Shadow ship, he came a bit closer and sat near the small seated avatar.

The Shadow ship looked hopeful at that "If you will tell me."

Xavier nodded "Very well. It began long, long ago when life first became intelligent, gained minds, and decided that they needed to protect the younger life-forms as they too evolved minds and intelligence…"

The rest of them settled themselves comfortably in the mind-space as they waited for Xavier to tell the Shadow ship the story of how it came to be. When he got to the part about the Vorlons and Shadows fighting each other repeatedly over the issue of who was right, the ship's avatar scrunched up its face in distaste and said "That's stupid, they should know that nothing is absolute." Most of the additional persons there looked at each other and barely resisted laughing, even Jack managed to keep from laughing.

After Xavier covered them coming to the sector, he mentioned the Shadow invasion of Vorlon space, and then "…We acted to distract the Shadows, surprising them when a fleet of them were trying to destroy a Vorlon fleet. From the wreckage we salvaged, we found some living cells that hadn't self-destructed yet. We were able to stop them from self-destructing, then fed them the nutrients they needed to grow, and, well, here you are."

"So I'm a Shadow ship? Didn't you say the Shadows and Vorlons both have mind-influences that span this whole sector? Why haven't I felt anything then?" The young vessel's avatar reflected a wide-eyed innocence as it asked critical questions.

"We shielded you from it… we seek to understand you, and we have no doubt that if you'd been educated by the Shadows you'd have attacked us or self-destructed before we could have any meaningful conversations." Xavier smiled a bit when the avatar stuck his tongue out in a face of disgust at the thought of fighting mindlessly.

"But I don't know anything about the Shadows, well, I'm beginning to be able to sense my own parts and the food I'm being fed with, but…"

"We wanted to get to know you, know if the Shadows built you to be arrogant by nature. We want to be friends."

The kid-avatar, which had been edging away from him warily, stopped "Friends?"

"Yes, friends. We don't want to destroy the Shadows, Vorlons, or anyone, unless there is no other choice. We wanted to understand the Shadows so that we could speak with them and reach an understanding."

"Does it mean you have to change how they think? Make them and the Vorlons be less stupid?"

"Yes."

"Good luck, you'll need it." The child-avatar got up to leave, before Xavier put a gentle hand on his shoulder.

"Once you are mature, you will have a choice to make. You can stay with us, or you can go to Z'ha'dum and join the Shadows there. The choice is entirely up to you. There is no Shadow psychic influence making you go, but also no restraints forcing you to stay with us. Everything begins with choice, young one."

"Or I could strike out on my own, but that would be too dangerous with the Vorlons and Shadows being the way they are… I think I'll stay, at least for a while as I learn more about this sector."

Xavier nodded and smiled "Very well, what do you want us to call you?"

"A name…hmm… I'll need to think about it for a bit."

"Do you want us to leave while you think?"

"No, it's okay…" A few mind-minutes—practically an eternity—later they had their answer "Call me Dusk."

"Alright, Dusk, we'll talk again later, is that alright with you?"

"Okay, but come back soon… it's lonely out here when all I can feel is my body taking in food and energy while I grow my sensors." The child left the mindscape at that, and everyone else dropped out too.

"That… was enlightening." Commander T'Soni said "Hold on, I think we need to get our hands on someone who might know some more about Shadow warship construction than Dusk's DNA tells us."

"Who?" Xavier asked.

"Anna Sheridan, if the Shadows hold her as they do now, they'll be able to use her at an opportune time to throw a wrench into Sheridan's plans. Better to deal with it now than later."

Xavier frowned "Isn't that his dead wife? What about his relationship with Delenn?"

Commander T'Soni shook her head "The Anna Sheridan he loved is dead, I might be able to recover something, but I think she'll be amicable in the end to a clean divorce and let him go with Delenn, either out of a reconstructed mind wanting to start anew or, if I somehow manage to reinstall her original personality and spirit, out of love, understanding that his destiny lies with another now. Mind you, the latter result is highly unlikely."

Xavier shrugged "Good luck, you'll need it."

"Nah, all I'll need is for Lorien to agree to open a small gateway in the teleportation shields of Z'ha'dum. I'm pretty sure he'll know I'm coming and that we will truly speak at a later time, after this unpleasantness is dealt with."

* * *

_CSC Surveyor, Local date June 17, 2260, Coalition date May 28, 3872_

"Flashlight? Really?" Miranda said with a note of humour in her voice at the Grand Crusader's label for the project.

"Hey, it's a design we'll be using almost exclusively against the Shadows, and its main weapon is a laser, hence the name. Besides, it helps show _us_ personally that the Shepards inherited their occasional bouts of immaturity from _both_ their parents." Kasumi said as they played around with the design, still occasionally disagreeing about the general design layout in terms of bubble shield emitters, "personal" shield emitters, stealth generators, engines, assorted reactors and secondary weapons.

"Well, I guess we're going to be replacing the old-fashioned Soul Ripper with something better then…" Jacob said as he looked over the weapons systems of the new proposed T4 Gunship.

"Not quite, given the mass, energy and build time budget we have assigned it and the fact that this thing has to move at higher accelerations but similar overall atmospheric speed, it might match up with the Soul Ripper in a straight-up fight, but it will be of somewhat lower cost-effectiveness mass for mass." Miranda replied before she realized something odd "Why aren't you guys contributing anything to the external shape of this thing? You do realize the Aeon Illuminate has five standard-issue Experimental units already, right?" Those were the Galactic Colossus, Tempest, CZAR, Paragon and Salvation.

Kasumi shrugged "Well, it's not that hard to change an Aeon outline to Seraphim aesthetics, although they really need a water-borne experimental and not another airborne one." The Ahwassa was in fact capable of hovering on top of a target and bombing it repeatedly as fast as the bomb bay could synthesize new bombs… That was if it wanted to absorb massive amounts of anti-air fire, hence very few commanders overrode the standard bomber configuration.

"We could always make this thing a UEF experimental, but the preliminary weapons were all Aeon, so we might as well give it an Aeon aesthetic scheme and leave it in the pool of shared units that's been growing since the Coalition formed." Jacob said reasonably.

Miranda rolled her eyes "Why do I get the impression that it's because you're both too lazy to help with the plating scheme I'm working on?"

"Because we are." Kasumi answered as she shifted some parts around again on the model hologram in front of them. "Hmm, not enough space for Zealots anymore, we should use Flayer SAMs then, more compact, significantly less overall yield, but thrice as many missiles to dump at the target per volley, very useful against lighter or unshielded air units."

"And the same power against structural fields or shields." Miranda nodded "Let's do this thing."

The model they were working on currently resembled a, well, a 200-metre, somewhat clunky cigar. It was currently mounting a Phason Laser along its centerline with the ball-shaped director turret (e.g. the head of a GC) facing forward and upward from the vessel's axes at the front end of the gunship. Well aft, on the bottom of the hull, was a single Flayer SAM mount (aka a UEF T3 SAM slapped onto the hull) behind a "Air Cleaner" T2 Flak mount (fragmentation flak was found to be more efficient than electron flak against organic or physically fragile targets) for anti-fighter defence. It mounted enough field and assorted shield generators to give it higher total durability than the modern Soul Ripper, had higher acceleration, but also cost _vastly_ more mass and energy to build. This was mostly because it had a Mass Effect FTL drive installed.

It had no splash damage whatsoever in its weapons, unlike the classic Cybran gunship. It might have better anti-ground damage, but it was weaker against air units than the modern Soul Ripper and lacked active stealth. However, with the durability level they would be very useful for boring in close with their FTL drives to Shadow death cloud constituents before burning away at critical sections with their laser, relying on close range to provide accuracy. They would also help soak up a lot of damage for the starfighters, which would probably still do most of the damage against the Shadow warships unless the simulations were very much wrong.

Despite certain misgivings about the name, the "Flashlight" Experimental Gunship would be born in good time (the name would eventually be changed though). Coming up with an idea might be fairly simple, but optimizing its performance, well, that took time, a lot of time. When fighting in-atmosphere against ground targets, it would flip itself over to be able to train its laser upon the ground and letting its anti-air weapons stand on the upper side of the hull. Of course, most of its components would need firmware updates when they re-established contact with the Coalition given the amount of tech research that was nearing fruition when they left, but hey, whatever worked against the Shadows was worthwhile, right?

That had, several days ago, brought out another question, asked by Mirala when the project began: "Why don't we just slap an FTL drive on the back end of a Yolona Oss missile and fly it up a Shadow planet-killer's ass?"

"It's technically illegal by Coalition law to put FTL systems on a high-yield warhead… and high-yield warheads don't generally react well to trying to Quantum Jump." Miranda had answered her.

"What about a Mass Effect drive then? Besides, if we're dealing with planet-razing weapons, surely we can make allowances? It's like fighting Covenant Super Carriers, but worse!"

"Well, perhaps, but the stabilization systems needed to ensure the FTL and warhead are compatible… it'll take a lot of work, on a level where it might be better to wait to see if there's been any developments to that effect from home yet. We could tack launchers to our ships given the Grand Crusader's authorization level, but they would take time to build after we hit the engagement unless we're ambushing the enemy. That's because the Yolona Oss missile was never designed to be _fabricated_ aboard a system undergoing constant quantum drive accelerations, so making the process fully compatible and stable would probably cut down its yield quite a bit unless we want to increase cost or build time. Even the _Boneguard_ had to build its missiles pre-battle. We don't have enough time or people to do the necessary research here."

It was one of the reasons why sub-launched strategic missiles tended to be of lower yield than silo-based ones, the adaptation of the process had placed certain constraints on the hardware, other than the plain old problem of "size matters". That had meant sub-launched missiles needed much denser plating due to less space being available for their structural fields to permeate, hence a similar mass cost to silo-launched missiles, plus various other requirements, cutting down the yield unless they wanted to increase the already-annoying cost and build time even further… Subs couldn't be assisted as efficiently as ground-based silos by other engineering units due to the spatial arrangements of their internal missile factories, so that didn't help speed things up with regards to their own already-lower build rates compared to fixed silos.

* * *

A/N: Hope I explained properly the obscenely high build rates of nuke silos and how they are not worth assisting with engineers.

* * *

_Babylon Five, Local date June 18, 2260, Coalition date May 29, 3872_

"You're on in three…" the cameraman counted down on his fingers before the reporter began the script that was designed to be as favourable to Earth Gov as possible without inducing people to turn off their TVs.

"This is an ISN special report, _The Coming Storm_. I'm Lillian Volta, reporting here from _Babylon Five_, the station commanded by breakaway officer John Sheridan, who was a former Earth Force Captain and has been the leader of the recent insurrection throughout Earth Alliance space. Until last week the two factions were in a violent standoff, with mankind divided in a conflict that has allowed alien influences to try to engulf us yet again. As of yesterday the station's quarantine was lifted by President Clarke due to extraordinary circumstances. The Centauri, under the direct orders of Emperor Cartagia attacked and destroyed the colony on Proxima III, forcing the surviving Earth Alliance vessels from the peacekeeping fleet to retreat before using nuclear weapons on the colony. So far no survivors have been found. General Christopher Brindley chose to enter restricted _Babylon Five_ space to escape the pursuing Centauri warships. An agreement was quickly struck despite the differences of the factions and the General was escorted to Earth space. The message he brought from B5 was that the Earth Alliance would have to send envoys to the station to discuss these developments."

The camera rotated to a view of the exterior of the station through the observatory's dome for a moment, showing the various dots (and some which were much larger than dots) in the distance, as she continued "_Babylon Five_ itself had been attacked by a large Centauri fleet only recently, which was almost immediately annihilated by stealthed mines of unknown affiliation, most likely from the Human-controlled, so-called Coalition of Species ships that have caused so much grief to Earth Alliance in the past months. Simultaneously, the Minbari Federation was also attacked by elements of another race, which were mostly repelled. Only one of twelve strikes managed to do significant damage, however this still tells us that this is a serious threat that could potentially launch us into full-scale war with races other than the Centauri. Rumours tell us that the Vorlons are also in a major conflict of their own, but nothing has been confirmed yet. Because of these events, the President has taken the step of letting representatives meet on B5 with the non-aligned races, the Minbari and Captain Sheridan to begin preparations for what is expected to be a major struggle against the forces of evil. Every one of the factions present are furious at these unprovoked attacks, although the security here didn't seem to show it. We were only scanned twice before we were allowed in, although we had been assured that security was to be extremely tight and due to that we were only allowed to bring one news anchor."

Little did she know that Omni sensors had been used to full effect, identifying certain… interesting individuals. "From here, the crystal observatory of B5, we can see at least three renegade EA ships and in the distance one of the rather, uh, peppered-looking Coalition ships." It was mostly white, black, grey, or a deep olive/blue when adaptive plating was inactive, so the description was appropriate. "We have been told that Allied forces are guarding this area to a distance of one light-day, with our own forces on the perimeter to avoid any unpleasantness between us and Sheridan's ships. The Brakiri Alliance, Gaim Intelligence, Drazi Freehold, Pak'ma'ra and many other races are here and have docked shuttles." A jump point opened up within decent visual distance and the camera focused on it. "The Minbari have arrived, two Sharlin war cruisers and a White Star, of the same make as several of the ships under Sheridan's control. Many years ago, the Minbari nearly rendered mankind extinct and the memories, though fading, will never be forgotten. It is one of the reasons President Clarke…"

The commentary ceased as the room went silent, with Sheridan followed by Ambassador Kosh of the Vorlon Empire coming into the room with the other races' delegates. "Gentle-beings, I want to thank you for your courage in coming to report on this historical event taking place today. This conference is being broadcast live to all worlds in the sector, and the Centauri will see it too. They will see it and know that we will not back down and let them kill innocents at will. The colony on Proxima III is gone, Minbari assets have been struck and Earth Alliance ships have been attacked, not to mention the continued wars against the non-aligned worlds. This must end, we must come together and sign a mutual defence pact, for there is strength in unity that cannot be had in division. You who are watching, and who would oppose us, you have been warned."

When asked later, the Minbari would initially state that they'd arrived before their decoy group did, but in reality Neroon and Delenn had been teleported into the delegates' waiting rooms by Commander T'Soni. However, that was beside the point. The real crux of the Commander's current thoughts was one being in the crowd of reporters that her crimson eyes passed over almost innocently.

Galen mentally jumped as a voice rang in his mind _"Look at you."_ It said in a sneering tone _"Do not fear too much, you who takes advantage of the knowledge he has and others do not to enforce power over them, as every oppressor in history did. After all, educating all these people about everything would be kind of expensive, so your order can't exactly afford it…"_

"_Who are you and what do you want?"_ He asked back.

"_The questions of the ages, hmm? Look up to the table, no, not Xavier, I'm the green-haired woman next to him."_ The feminine voice said, he barely kept from snapping his eyes to her in his seemingly-nonchalant scan of the long negotiations table. _"You do know that to keep the masses stupid so that you can assert your power over them and keep them downtrodden is only going to result in your own destruction if they get enough wind of you to rise up, right? So many of your order will submit someday to the temptation of enforcing your will on primitives like a god that corruption is inevitable. Power corrupts, Galen, never forget that. I hope you are strong enough of will to pull out while there is still hope for you. I have seen people like your cult many times through different lifetimes and universes, in the end, the only thing you can become is someone who abuses his power. I am serious, Galen, you might want to think about what exactly you are doing. Are you helping civilizations survive or something else remotely useful? Not often enough, I would think, to compensate for the sheer number of those in your order who go mad with power and try to deify themselves by exploiting those who do not know, those who are not educated…"_

He frowned, no matter how he tried, he couldn't dislodge the seed of doubt she's planted in him with only a few hateful but _accurate_ words. The order of techno-mages did indeed have its embarrassments, but most of the time the actions of the order were fairly benign… weren't they?

* * *

_Shortly Thereafter, Sheridan's Quarters…_

"So what did you think of the negotiations, Neroon?" Sheridan asked as they entered his quarters

"I have been to many significantly more entertaining endeavours." He said with a straight face before smirking a bit as he fell back onto Delenn's couch. Sheridan was seated in the chair at Delenn's desk and the Ambassador herself, realizing decorum was no longer needed and with a nod from Sheridan…

"I thought it went about as well as the last time I tried to eat peanut butter." Delenn muttered into the pillow before lifting her head. "Right down to the fact that it worked in the end." Neroon hid his frown of distaste, wondering how often Delenn had had to subject herself to the human's flat bed.

Sheridan pulled open the fridge under his desk "Here, some of the more exotic drinks the Coalition people agreed to supply us with, quite different from the fruits of Earth." He tossed two bottles over to the Minbari, each marked with what appeared to be a blue orange, speckled yellow pear and a red and yellow apple. "This mix is quite invigorating, to me at least, and I have guarantees from the doctors that Minbari do not react adversely to the ingredients."

Neroon raised an eyebrow as he tasted the unique mix of flavours that had just been brought to the attention of his tongue. It was balanced in sweet, bitter and sour flavours, with the last being the most prominent. There was also a hint of spice and dryness somewhere in the background. "This is surprisingly good." They enjoyed their drinks in silence for a bit as they thought over the negotiations that had just concluded "The war already started and they're still arguing about leadership… we are more alike than I once believed, Sheridan. My respects to you, and to Delenn, for dealing with so many aliens all the time. I will tell the Council that the White Stars will remain under B5 control… but we must go soon, Delenn. The time for pleasure and rest is over, we will need every ship to face the coming conflict. This time, I think we should take the shuttle, or we might lose the drinks we've just had, even though the trip would be faster."

Sheridan nodded, moving over to his bed and grabbing Delenn's free hand "My candle is lit against the darkness, be well."

She nodded as she rose "Be well." Neroon watched in silence, then trailed after Delenn as she left the room without a backward glance.

* * *

_Near/On Babylon Five, Local date June 20, 2260, Coalition date May 31, 3872_

"An appropriate term for this situation, from the B5 perspective at least, would in my opinion be 'ZOMFGBBQSAUCE'." Commander T'Soni said morbidly as they watched, from the bridge of the _Surveyor_, the retrieval of a shuttle that had just arrived through the Jumpgate. The shuttle had been chased by a Centauri _Vorchan_ that had been promptly sliced apart by more than forty Heavy Microwave Lasers and hundreds of other munitions of much higher energy content. The even heavier plasma weapons of the locals smashing against the shattered hull had merely been an afterthought in the vessel's annihilation. "Here comes Anna Sheridan, or her body at least… her old personality has long since died, but as Doctor Brackman said once, even dead gods can dream. We all know that you make much surer a god has died than a mortal, and that means there is still hope for salvation to one degree or another." Her grin spread farther than any human grin could safely have "To quote a certain Dark Prelate, 'There is _always_ hope.'"

"Are you quite done your monologue yet?" Xavier asked.

"What better things do we have to do while we wait for her to eventually meet with Sheridan? We've already agreed with B5 that she can't go directly to their medical bay in case she's carrying something, so we're bringing her here first, then we transfer her over. I do feel a bit sorry for Sheridan though, either I salvage her a bit more and he's going to be stuck getting dumped or making a choice. If I don't we'll need to deal with her somehow after mining her for information. I don't think Sheridan would appreciate us killing her or learning that we could have fixed her at least a bit but chose not to… I did have to speak to Lorien for the favour of subtly bringing down the teleportation shields of Z'ha'dum for a few moments a few days back, you remember me heading out on that mission."

Xavier sighed "Very unfortunately, yes, your mentality was always that if we'd kicked the hornet's nest once and they're already out for blood, might as well poke it again. Just because she was installed in a Shadow ship doesn't necessarily mean she knows how they were built, you know…"

Commander T'Soni shrugged "I think it might be worth the risk. I couldn't interrogate her in the middle of their Dark City, so I broke her out. Besides, Delenn needs someone to teach her the ropes with regards to John Sheridan."

He snorted "I think there is a reason you're known to the Aeon and UEF more often as the Lunatic Commander than the Legendary Commander."

She shrugged again "Meh."

A couple hours later found Commander T'Soni back on B5, having just teleported Anna Sheridan to John Sheridan's front door. "I feel like an express transit system." The older woman complained.

Anna Sheridan shrugged "And I felt like a Shadow Battle-Crab last month, if I heard you right you volunteered because you wanted to listen in on this _private_ conversation between me and my husband, who I have not seen for _years_." She raised her hand and knocked, forestalling any rebuke.

Commander T'Soni smiled mentally, it seemed that she had managed to salvage more the first time around than she expected, including the no-nonsense scientist part of the old personality, although she hadn't been able to hash out which science exactly it was from the woman's broken soul fragments. If she could extract the pieces for solidification it would be so much easier, but it was highly unlikely—no, impossible since she couldn't sense the ability—for Anna Sheridan to have the skill of not suffer a total brain function collapse without a soul/mind inhabiting the brain. Commander T'Soni herself could remember how hard it had been for her to re-learn the skill from Mesprit, a skill she had forgotten in the cycle of re-spawns, a skill which she'd seared into her Origin's reincarnation when she and Crystal had data-dumped on the younger Liara T'Soni and enabled her survival when Gravemind kidnapped her.

John Sheridan opened the door with a doomed expression on his face, standing still and silent, as if unable to find the appropriate words "Hey John." Anna Sheridan greeted him, after five seconds of staring without a reply, she sighed "I know what you're thinking, you're right, no one comes back from Z'ha'dum the same. Part of me has been damaged, John. They put me into one of their machines… their ideals are so different from ours, on a level we can barely understand…" she shook her head a bit "When they—what you call Shadows—released me, they told me I would be used as bait to get to you, but I managed to escape. You're interfering with their plans, and they will destroy B5 unless you break this alliance up. They believed that if you found I was alive, I could be used as ransom to keep you under control."

"They told me you were dead, lost with the others of your ship." He replied rather hollowly.

Anna sighed "_Delenn_ told you I was dead, I heard the Shadows tell of her. She's _Minbari_. They never tell the whole truth if they feel it will benefit them. She wants you, she wants to keep you to herself, and she will lie to you to do it."

John Sheridan's eyes narrowed and he crossed his arms over his chest "You escaped from the Shadows, hmm? How?"

"She had help."

Sheridan looked at the green-haired woman, his eyes full of betrayal "_You_?"

At the same time, Anna's eyes snapped to her too as she hissed "What?"

"I fixed your broken spirit, what little I could salvage, enough to get you out from total subservience. I want to know if people plugged into Shadow ships can still be recovered by one such as I." Although she was more direct psychic than mind-psychic, she only knew of two beings currently available who could outdo her in mind-psychic capacity, although Lorien shouldn't really count since she was a light bulb to his star in every respect except willpower… "From the results I'm seeing so far, I need a much longer, much more intensive session if I'm going to have you more or less repaired enough to function without the Shadows. The hold they have on you is still too strong for you to be quite safe. I will be available when you agree to it, for now, I think you should enjoy a stay in house arrest, right, Captain?"

Sheridan froze for an instant before replying "It is the only choice. I am sorry Anna, I can't let you run around while you're still attached to the Shadows."

The body of Anna Sheridan set her jaw but said nothing more as she was taken away. However a heated argument soon began between Captain Sheridan and Commander T'Soni after they'd put the woman into her new quarters under house arrest. "Why did you bring her here?"

"So that we might learn more about how Shadow ships work from someone who has been one." She replied coolly.

He growled "Do you really think she'd just tell us?"

"Listen, I wasn't aware you would hate your wife THIS badly, alright? And she was the only one I could find enough of a soul left in to patch up enough so that she'd come here." That was technically completely true, any of the other possibilities she'd located would just be a data mine that they should really shoot out an airlock after stripping the data from their minds.

"Really, Commander?"

"Also, it's a quick way to chat with the Shadows if we demand their presence at some manner of meeting. At least, easier than me swooping down on a ship, drilling a hole in, grabbing one and flying out, then teleporting back here. It's also a hell of a lot more than asking Lorien to help with kidnapping an actual Shadow off Z'ha'dum."

"I still can't believe… of all people why'd it have to be her?"

Her voice was absolutely frigid now "If you want, we could go kill her and no one would be the wiser."

"That's not what I meant and you know it."

"It was to seize initiative from the Shadows alright? If they'd had her in their hands she could have been a distraction to you at some critical moment, but now, we deprive them of that option. I'm sorry to have dumped this on you, Sheridan, but initiative is everything in this conflict. They are gaining ground steadily in Vorlon space and when they are done they would have flung her at you and used your momentary distraction to do something foul."

Sheridan's teeth relaxed a bit from their grinding "I can somewhat understand your logic, and why you couldn't warn me, that doesn't mean I like it."

She grimaced "I never asked you to like it. I just need to know that you're ready for what comes after."

He sighed again "I hope I am, as much as you hope I am."

* * *

_Two minutes later…_

There was only one more complication for the day, Commander T'Soni got a call the same time as Captain Sheridan did, while they were walking back toward the C&C section. "Aw hell…" She said slowly as she read the report "Well, it's time for some heavy-duty re-socialization. Granted it'll be a lot less ham-handed than what I'll have to do to strip your ex-wife away from possession, and even then I will most likely end up salvaging a cheap copy of a spirit instead of calling back the original if she hasn't re-spawned yet, but then again what can you expect from a soul who began her existence as a replica?" She had toned down to a near-whisper for the last part, and Sheridan only stared for a moment before deciding to act like he hadn't heard that instead of trying to figure out if she was speaking of Anna or herself as the replica.

"Hold on, I think I'll bring Truman with us if we need to meet with them, he's the highest rated Psi-capable on the B5 staff…" Sheridan looked something up on his tablet "Well, good, he's on shift at the moment, so he probably won't be grumpy from being woken up given how hard he's been worked since he joined up. That's only if we need to meet with them right away though…" Yeah, rarely less than eleven hours a day, seven days a week tended to be quite taxing…

That was nowhere near as taxing as the previous weeks had been to the Psi-Corps escapees, the elite members of the Corps, or at least those of the elite that had evaded capture and hadn't died en route. Having distinguished their members from normal society for so long they had almost no idea how to function normally, hunting them hadn't been much of a challenge for Clark's military. Coalition sensors and ships had tracked the escape of the two Novas and two Omegas from Earth a couple days ago and their hyperspace flight. One of each type had survived transit, their trackers had watched the other Omega be overwhelmed by Earth Alliance warships and the other Nova take damage and fall behind before it was destroyed by the other Psi-Corps ships firing from their rear turrets. The Coalition was fully aware of how much mercy the Psi-Corps showed and deserved.

So was the B5 command crew, Susan Ivanova, who had recognized the identifications of the ships from the briefing she'd gotten, barked the orders "Stop immediately or you will be annihilated, this is your one and only warning."

"_Babylon Five_, hold your fire! We're telepaths, refugees from Earth!" Bester's voice rang from the speakers while his most undesirable face showed on the screen "We are here seeking asylum because we have nowhere else to go!"

"We will consider it, in the meantime, park yourselves ten kilometres from our two Omegas, head-to-head." Ivanova growled. "Why are you back, Bester?"

"Your little stunt with your Coalition has started a genocide of all of us." He said bitterly "Despite our differences, Susan—"

"Commander Ivanova, Bester!"

"As I was saying, despite our differences, the people I am trying to save have done nothing to you. You extend mercy to every alien that comes passing by but not to your own people? Think of the long run, Commander."

"The optimal long term strategy would be to put your leadership to death for destroying your fellow refugees without even trying to rescue them or warning them to get to escape pods, just because their engines had taken damage." A third voice cut in, Xavier Fran's. "Psi-Corps is a rotten institution that is unworthy of existence, no better than a modern-day Gestapo or Inquisition. You have twenty-three hundred telepaths packed into your ships, all but the youngest all reading as above P-5 by your minuscule scale. That fact alone warrants the disposal of your entire command hierarchy so that the children may be raised free from your poisonous indoctrination, segregation and arrogance. If even one move is made that I don't like, your lives are forfeit. For one who has personally pressed the big red button repeatedly, the ender of the lives of tens of millions of innocents," He still remembered being recognized from newsreels the first time he set foot on a Cybran world he had once been to. Without his helmet, he had been recognized, and he remembered himself, Hannah, Ariel and Eric all taking a beating defending against the angry crowds that had quickly gathered before police could arrive and break up the mob. Fortunately none of the mob had brought real weapons. It had been the worst date he'd ever been on with Hannah, and the source of their first major fight as a couple, over the issue of how she, young and innocent, could possibly be with someone like him. But Xavier Fran didn't survive a hundred and fifty years of the Infinite War by letting himself show or be affected by distraction or memories when his mind was in battle mode, and so he continued as coldly as before "disposing of a couple hundred criminals with a little bit of collateral damage is _nothing_."

"You're a war criminal?" The video showed Bester and Ivanova suddenly recoiling in disgust at having said the same thing at the same time, even though Ivanova had been faking her surprise.

His whole air changed to a disturbingly pleasant one in an instant "No, I am not, because there will always be collateral murder, Bester. I have seen war on a scale you cannot even comprehend, so please get off your damned high horse and realize that you aren't the be all and end all of the universe, thank you." He closed the channel.

Xavier was glad he'd told Sheridan and Ivanova about some of the details of the War and how the Aeon had "cleansed" settlements, and they'd understood after he talked about how some of the more sadistic Aeon commanders had done it… Some would secure the area before making some Flare Light Assault Bots and have them shoot low-intensity sonic blasts into the husks of civilian buildings after the higher-tier units whittled away their structural fields. The sonic blasts would pulverize bones and flesh slightly with each pass, but not enough to kill immediately. Some would have their engineers reclaim the wrecked buildings or whatever else survivors hid in, make corrals out of wall sections, and then have gunships fire their lasers into grid spaces at random, enjoying the utter terror of the remaining prisoners as they tried to claw their way up the structural fields of the wall sections to escape. Many had invented even crueller methods. Xavier did it the relatively painless way, burning the area with a strategic/tactical missile silo or using a T2/T3 artillery installation shell (or shells as may be the case) while saying prayers for them. He'd been reprimanded more than once for the latter action, but his combat performance precluded demoting him for that sort of thing alone, particularly once Princess Rhianne came into power.

"I'll have someone contact you with instructions eventually, for now just stand head to head with our Omegas and power down your engines." Susan stated before cutting the link. She hailed Xavier next "That was good, Grand Crusader. I know going over those memories hurts you, but it managed to cow him a good bit."

"I'm glad I could help, Commander. We _would_ offer to build a station to house them, but, uh… disarming the schematics and removing anything that would be considered sensitive technology by this sector's standards would take longer than coming up with a schematic from scratch, which would already take a bit of a while. Perhaps they can be put into a couple dome settlements on the planet below? We could terraform the planet, while they are living on it, to habitability within a few years if you would like us to…"

"You surprise me yet again… I don't think that will be necessary, Grand Crusader. After all, they deserve no less than a bit of confinement instead of being allowed to do whatever the hell they want like they used to be when Psi-Corps was still a viable organization."

"I am glad we are of one accord then." Xavier bowed his head slightly.

"And I'm glad we won't be talking to them today." John Sheridan said grimly as he walked into C&C, having listened to all of the exchange on his tablet. "I've had enough of unexpected guests for one day. Grand Crusader, did you know about your associate's mad expedition to break my wife out of Z'ha'dum?"

"She wasn't gone long enough for it to really be an expedition, but yes, she told me about how we needed to seize the initiative from the Shadows and at least set them on their back feet to buy us more time to amass our forces."

"I expected as much. Well, she did a good job, even though I still don't like it."

* * *

A/N: Does anyone else think that _Dusk_ will not go over well with _any_ of the locals when they see it, after it grows up enough to agree to being seen?

**Sajuuk**: SupCom: ME 3 might take a few more months to roll out, but I understood what you were saying.

**Spacebar**: 1) Only so much they could do in terms of cooling per weapon, so the solution is to put on more weapons. 2) HOW DID I MISS THAT? Well, it has been rectified now, *puts on sunglasses awaiting the bright glare of the nature vs. nurture debate*. 3) Yeah, well… they'll come around, eventually.

**Nenfaer**: I partly resolved the necessary brain problem here (will be expanded on later). I was contemplating making it like a pet dog, but then decided on a more sentient personality.

REVIEW!


	17. The Might of Exponents

A/N: **Be warned, all the numbers for ship construction were taken from the numbers I posted in a data table on DeviantArt.** If you don't like the horrible reality of how freaking FAST the Coalition can build ships, sorry, but think of how fast Star Trek replicators can make food, then scale that up to starship sizes (not that that technology can manage some of the elements, which is its downfall), although it is much slower than a few seconds, it is the same general idea. Multiply that by many such replicators going full steam at once, pumping out half-finished ships that can finish themselves and be boosted by other, finished ships, and the result is a hell of a lot of ships. **Coalition ground armies can grow into thousands of units within a couple hours, scale the stuff being produced up a few orders of magnitude and it takes over a month, doesn't seem too far wrong to me. This is why the Covenant War was basically a large-scale delaying action while they tried to take the opponent apart from within without wrecking **_**too**_** many of the good warships the Covenant had on-hand.**

_**Also, please note that there now exists a brief piece serving as a **__**collection of previews for some of the yet-unwritten parts of my two universes. It was posted on April 1, 2013.**_

* * *

Chapter 17: The Might of Exponents

_Near Proxima III, Local date June 21, 2260, Coalition date June 1, 3872_

Dealing with someone who knows enough to be a god to more primitive cultures and has a reasonable level of direct power to back it up is often a pain in the ass, as Xavier Fran knew well by now. However, they are also incredibly helpful when you're fighting ancients whose logic was at many times completely counterintuitive. Unfortunately, that didn't mean the Shadows didn't sometimes make sense, or that their servants didn't sometimes make sense. It seemed quite evident that Proxima III was set up as an ambushing ground. He dialled the General in charge of mustering the defences at Proxima and setting up the base of operations, so that they could talk "General Pickett, I think both you and I can see your megalomaniacal President is making a huge mistake using Proxima III as a staging ground. The Centauri have goaded him into it by using clean nukes on the colony, and he insists on taking the bait because his arrogance is too much for anything else."

"I'm sure the President has his reasons." Pickett said diplomatically, although by the grimace of his video feed he was severely inclined to agree with the Grand Crusader. It would have made much more sense to amass the Earth Alliance fleets over Earth, but ego forbade such sense. So the Earth Alliance had decided to make Proxima III their primary staging ground after learning the Centauri had used clean nukes. They had asked B5 for support, and Xavier had agreed to provide support.

"Well, all we can do now is for the Centauri to try to spring their trap on us… they will be sorely disappointed by what comes after. Well, Clark asked the Shadows to do something to keep him in power and they delivered, siccing their underlings the Centauri on you so that everyone backs the throne, we've seen this so many times already with petty dictators it's not even funny. See you later."

Pickett grimaced "…See you later." He cut the line, knowing full well that it was an altogether too plausible hypothesis.

Since it had been almost four weeks after the near-mitotic production of Seventh through Eleventh Battle Groups began, the Coalition had, through another round of replication, cranked its forces up to twelve relatively new Battle Groups (7th through 18th) produced by ships building other ships. In the meantime the 75 Ship Gantries had each spat out half-baked ships at a rate of several per day. That meant in the last 26 days they had pumped out nearly 7500 hulls now in various stages of completion, assisted by other ships and clouds of Rover construction drones. Of those 7500 hulls, 2500 had been completed since they had been prioritized while the others had not been, they would be used for the protection of the shipyards now located in an uninhabitable system near the Babylon 5 system which had no Jumpgate, the system Dusk was living in. The other 18 available Battle Groups would be involved directly with the war effort. The crew had been scattered among the Battle Groups for their various missions as necessary before being sent out.

Current Battle Group composition had been shifted around after combat analysis of local tactics. Each group of five hundred ships contained one hundred twenty each of Light Destroyers (LD) and Light Cruisers (LC), sixty each of Heavy Destroyers (HD) and Heavy Cruisers (HC), one hundred "Escort Carriers" (EA) and forty Battle Cruisers (BC). In total, the ships of a single Battle Group could carry into battle a maximum 244,400 Tier 3 aerospace craft, almost half of which (120,000) were in/on the carriers. Although the initial battle group organization had been more reliant on heavy destroyers and cruisers, and fielded a smaller number of starfighters, one Battle Group had been essentially ground to scrap against what was effectively a 200-ship Shadow fleet. So, tactics had to change, no more full-scale offensives, they would remain out of range and send tides of starfighters instead to overrun the enemy instead. It was a pity that in that case they wouldn't be able to jam Slipspace entry/exit portals, but the Shadows sin't use those anyways. Sadly this meant the Shadows were always capable of tactical jumps to run away from the FTL-incapable starfighters or at least avoid them for a while.

Many, looking at the numbers, would question why the Coalition hadn't developed space warfare to end the Infinite War. The answers were simple: Firstly, the civvies hated the idea of constantly having giant armies hanging overhead more than they hated the occasional hasty evacuation (most of the time these were successful, hence the relatively low death toll of the war, only nine Megadeaths per day). Secondly, the militaries were concerned about the potential of personnel going out of control or stationary defences being compromised. Thirdly, ship-borne quantum drives were for some reason not able to function with any reliability before the firing of Black Sun, or rather before the subsequent sealing of the Quantum Rift. Fourthly, given all of the above, Warp or Slipspace travel would be far too slow to make a difference in whether a settlement was burnt or not with the speed of ACU warfare and how slowly reinforcement fleets could move at best. Hence, well… space warfare didn't really get moving until after the Coalition formed.

* * *

A/N: The numbers are calculated from the data table I posted on DeviantArt about the various classes of Coalition warships.

* * *

_Near Proxima III, Local date June 21, 2260, Coalition date June 1, 3872_

One hundred twenty Earth Alliance heavy warships were presently amassed over Proxima III, with the _Surveyor_ in the outer system. Xavier had phrased it as "providing early warning", but they all knew it was to prevent the Earth Alliance ships from pulling a fast one. General Pickett and Captain Drake were currently seated in the General's quarters, simmering over what their new "friend" had pointed out. "We know he's right." Drake whispered after a while.

"I've had this place searched enough times, Captain, you can speak freely."

"A few weeks ago the government was about to collapse… then this war came and suddenly everyone loves the President. I believed his ideals for the most part, but this Ministry of Peace thing watching all of us…" Drake ran a hand through his hair, gnashing his teeth in anger.

Pickett sighed "This war did give him the power to do whatever he wants. The Grand Crusader just pointed out the obvious. Still, our duty is to protect humanity, and right now that means fighting the Centauri. That'll be tough, the Vorchan can outmanoeuvre our ships, and the particle weapons of a Primus are nothing to scoff at. Add a thousand years of experience with space combat and, well, we'll need to fight as hard as we possibly can to resist a large-scale attack. They're going to learn that humans don't take surprise attacks very well. The only rules of engagement in this fight that we're expecting will be that anything Centauri dies." He looked at the display that was supposed to emulate a window using an external camera as a Coalition starfighter flew by. "No apparent thrust mechanism whatsoever… I have to question if we shouldn't take that ship of theirs out right now while we still can, then learn as much from it as we could before the rest of their forces arrive."

"Sir, if we tried that, they'd just engage their stealth systems and hack us to bits while running circles around us. It's better than Minbari stealth from the rumours… their shields would protect them from our response for long enough to manoeuvre out of our range, for lasers and particle beams! Our plasma cannons can't even hit them!" Drake might not like the Coalition, but he had to admit their technology was very possibly too powerful to handle at the moment, especially if more of their ships decide to show up as had been rumoured to have occurred in Minbari space. The only consolation—and it wasn't much of one—was that they were at least mostly human or close enough it might not matter except to the fashion and entertainment industries.

Pickett sighed "I know, we don't have the technology needed to deal with something like that, and I doubt we can reverse-engineer anything we can get from them fast enough anyways."

"General to the bridge!" The intercom yelled urgently, making both men stiffen in their seats before springing up and heading for the transit ring that would allow them to transfer to the gravity-free main section of the ship. "We have warning that the enemy is inbound, ETA ten minutes. "

The General activated his communications headset "scramble all fighters, order the fleet to maximum readiness. Alert the ground troops." Fortunately the transit ring didn't take long and the bridge wasn't too far.

"Looks like two wings of three hundred warships each." Xavier Fran's face called from the main video screen "classic pincer movement. We shall screen you with the forces at our disposal." The tactical map he was feeding them suddenly showed a large number of additional symbols surrounding the Earth Alliance ships. "These are our forces in the area at this time."

"That's got to be about a thousand ships…" General Pickett whispered to himself.

"We've been busy building vessels since we arrived in this sector of space a few months ago and discovered we'd need more muscle than we had on hand. It's time to put them to good use beating back these bullies." The two Earth Alliance soldiers shared a glum look at that. They didn't have much of a choice, did they? Xavier kept talking, acting like nothing had happened "About half the ship profiles are Centauri, the other half are Drakh, and by the signature sizes… that big one is probably a carrier." It was a good twelve kilometres long, and was barrel-like enough that the estimate was likely to be correct.

"Move Omegas and Hyperions into the perimeter, Novas to the center." The former two ship types had more interceptors per anti-ship weapon than the last, hence the placements for both better defensive coverage and conservation of heavy anti-ship firepower. "Charge all weapons capacitors to maximum safe levels."

"You ready to put the music on in the Centauri ships, Liara?" Xavier barked at someone off-screen.

"Yep, might not be as good with these machines as Caprica is, but she's left enough programs that I can make do." A feminine voice replied. "I got a song picked out too."

"Excellent." Xavier smiled

Pickett and Drake didn't bother asking which song, instead focusing on their work rearranging the fleet formation and coordinating the placement of fighter and gunboat squadrons. That was until the sensor officer of the _Evanston_ called "Sir, the _Surveyor_ just completely disappeared from our sensors!"

"What? What is the meaning of this?"

"Our ships will remain under passive stealth and active camouflage, General, if you don't mind. We don't think the Centauri will be able to detect us this way, but we'll see if the Drakh are capable. We will land some mobile shield generators on your ships, if you're okay with that. There is still time to do so." Xavier chose to omit the information of mobile stealth generators existing.

"Anything you can spare would be excellent." Pickett said quickly. At times like this, one couldn't afford to be picky despite the giant red flag practically wrapping around his mind. He muted the microphone before looking at Drake "If they really have a thousand ships here standing around us, then their stealth and camouflage systems are absolutely ridiculous, at this rate we might as well let them fight so that we won't suffer casualties … but no, we're going to deliver some of our own payback for what the Centauri did here in their immense cowardice. Hopefully the shields they say they'll be lending us will stop us from taking any personnel losses."

Drake nodded respectfully, since either option was good in his eyes, the former for force conservation and the latter for Earth Alliance morale "Sir."

Pickett reopened the channel "We've plotted the likely hyperspace exit points and are forwarding the information to you, please shift most of the shield generators you said you will attach to our hulls toward the frontal arcs if you can. Please rearrange your forces for an envelopment so that we can pincer their pincers if you are agreeable to it."

"We're on it…" The green "Allied" icons on the Evanston's bridge display began shifting position to stand above and below the ecliptic relative to the expected enemy entry vectors "the hostile forces appear to be holding position in hyperspace, awaiting the next group of Earth Alliance ships scheduled to arrive in forty-three minutes, if that estimate you gave earlier is still accurate, General."

"Forty minutes, by the latest estimate. They'll probably launch their attack after giving the reinforcements time to settle into formation. I'd say they'll hit us around the fifty-five minute to one hour mark."

"Well then, I guess we have to wait." Xavier shut off the microphone and the video feed. "Hmm… new report from Jack, 'have infiltrated defences, preparing to engage Centauri mining operations'. More reports from Kasumi, Miranda, and the rest of them, they're good to begin their attacks." He looked over at Commander T'Soni as he began inputting orders for his ships into the computers "I'm authorizing the use of strategic missiles here at Proxima III, construct one _Plan C_ per Battle Cruiser and order them to attach to the bottoms of the hulls. Construct one missile per _Plan C_." The _Plan C_ was the recently-created (read: between the Covenant War and the expedition's departure for the Andromeda Galaxy) space-borne edition of the _Plan B_, applied when strategic missile power was needed but you needed to stay Quantum-Jump-capable. It was technically illegal for commanders of insufficient clearance to use, but that wasn't an issue here.

* * *

_Centauri Space, Same Time_

Across three systems held by the Centauri the attack by Jack's assigned Battle Group occurred simultaneously throughout their asteroid belts and on a couple planets. After taking up their positions, all ships had prepared for broadside attacks against the asteroid or in some cases groundside mining facilities from short range (less than four kilometres altitude for the ground-side mines). They executed their broadside rolls as one in the space of a couple seconds and followed the queued waypoint order of Quantum-Jumping and other FTL methods back to the rendezvous point. A significant fraction of the Centauri mining industry disappeared in a few seconds as explosions wrecked facilities and collapsed tunnels.

Helena's Battle Group had deployed themselves a good distance from the main Centauri shipyards, which was a good thing, because it was too heavily guarded by Drakh forces for them to risk popping in and blasting everything they could hit. However, that didn't mean they couldn't harass the garrison forces by firing a hail of Mavor shells at them from long range. The shells when used for this might be smaller than the ground counterpart so it didn't cost an obscene amount of energy to build and fire, but the velocity was so much higher that the energy requirements were the exact same. They were however like the ground-to-ground heavy shells in that they were active-stealthed and passive-camouflaged, with all sorts of signature dampening, scrubbing and scrambling technology packed in so that opponents couldn't just trace its path back to the gun. That meant the Drakh didn't pick them up on their sensors until a range of just over 1000 kilometres, which was too late to dodge the first volley of hundreds of shells traversing the distance in a single second. It crippled several Drakh Destroyers, severely damaging many more, and annihilated the unlucky Raider corvettes (serving as the Drakh fighter/gunship) that it scored hits on, while dealing fatal damage to the hulls in the shipyard space stations after passing through the Drakh formation. Only the Drakh presence and firepower shading prevented the shipyards from disintegrating under the weight of thousands of heavy artillery shells thrown in its direction. The Drakh moved their reaction force toward the vector the antimatter-based artillery shells were still peppering the shipyards from, shooting down as many shells as they could. They found nothing as Helena had only fired her whole fleet's guns several times before retreating to find softer targets to pound. She had left before the rounds arrived on-target, one of the many tactical applications of the various speed/shell size (durability to counter-fire, smaller shells were easier to prematurely detonate) settings of the big guns.

Jacob was, in conjunction with the other attacks, hitting convoys of merchant ships and their military escorts, hacking down on the logistical capacity of the Centauri. It was known to be an effective strategy against anyone who still used logistics, after all. However the arrival of Drakh warships prompted him to Quantum-Jump all his forces away to amass them together instead of being scattered in small hunting parties that could be destroyed piecemeal. Still, he'd blasted more than a hundred Centauri merchant ships out of space and half that number of escorting military vessels before choosing to retreat.

Kasumi, at the same time, was hacking into and stealing schematics from the Centauri computers at some of their shipyards, including the one Helena had just antagonized. It was remarkable how well a Spook could hide on the surface of a shipyard when the ships that could potentially sense it were distracted with something else and looking around _outside_ the yard for threats. The locals might be well behind in sensor and mobility technologies, but they had some nice—and glaringly high-signature—weapons technologies.

In other words, two thousand warships were running completely amok behind Centauri lines. If the Centauri had thought the Narn raiders an irritant when there were less than twenty Narn cruisers left harassing their shipping, then they were in for a change of opinions. This arrangement begged the question of where the hell the other twelve action-ready Battle Groups were. The answer was that they, under the charge of Miranda and Caprica were blindsiding the main Shadow thrust into Vorlon space as it reached the inner Vorlon colonies and met the Vorlon fleets that had been marshalled during the brief respite since the previous assault. That had quickly devolved into a chaotic three-way melee and the Coalition force suffered more than forty percent losses. At that point, Miranda had had enough of trying to show a clear message to the Shadows to back off.

She jumped her ships out of the battle-space, staying close enough to keep the starfighters from self-destructing from lack of an uplink. The Shadows, having sustained over twelve hundred ships destroyed and as many wounded, withdrew soon thereafter. The Vorlons, who had lost six hundred ships with more damaged—about a quarter of their casualties were due to also fighting the Coalition fleet once it arrived—also hurriedly left. As both sides departed, their ancient, stubborn minds worked to reach a consensus about what exactly should be done about these intruding pebbles. Perhaps it was time to actually talk to their old enemy about this. Despite their differences, the other side was probably going to agree that this technology that could seriously threaten First Ones was too dangerous in the hands of young ones.

Around the same time, Kelly, who was put in charge of babysitting the shipyards and Dusk, received an order to relinquish control of the 19th and 20th Battle Groups and be prepared to have them jump out. In response, she shuffled the three Battle Groups remaining under her control around a bit to cover well more than three times their number of unfinished hulls, focusing on assisting the completion of those closest to being finished. Dusk was hiding in the system's secondary asteroid cluster, digesting rocks for nutrients and soaking up solar energy for photosynthesis, as she didn't have fully developed reactors yet. She was escorted by a number of small ships, patrol boats and the like, that carried Deceiver Mobile Stealth Generators under their hulls so they could move around more easily, compared to the relatively stationary Twilight stealth generators that covered the shipyard area. Many weapons on the more finished hulls in the area were already functional and thus they could more or less defend themselves, but most of the hulls were not yet combat-ready.

* * *

_Near Proxima III, Local date June 21, 2260, Coalition date June 1, 3872_

Commander T'Soni was not at all pleased. No, that was an understatement. Fifteen Omega destroyers enhanced with Shadow-derived plating and weapons had arrived. It seemed Clark was putting all other improvements to Earth Force on hold for his personal guard to be upgraded. A foolish strategic manoeuvre when external forces were hammering down the gates, and one typical of petty, power-hungry fools. She, however, let Xavier be the one to open the channel and say overly-cheerfully "Welcome, Earth Alliance ships intended to be used as a gun pointed by Clark at the heads of all dissenters within Earth Force. Please follow General Pickett's orders unless you wish to be the first to get blasted by the Drakh and Centauri who are about to arrive. Thank you for your cooperation. Be advised, all Earth Force vessels, that the Shadow technology is obtained from two dormant ships found on Mars and Ganymede some time ago. The Mars ship was freed by another Shadow vessel, but Clark plugged person after person in as the CPU of the Ganymede ship, frying their brains that way until the ship finally went berserk and the Babylon 5 command crew had to come and stop it using Jupiter's atmosphere. Also, please be advised that the bio-signature of those ships indicates the hull material is defective and is likely to poison anyone working on them with time."

"What the hell are you talking about?" One of the Shadow-Omegas' captains asked sharply.

"You will see soon enough as your crew starts detecting unusual growths in the hull and people start dying from poisoning or psionic energy draining." Commander T'Soni said ominously.

"You know, Omega-X squadron, sounding a little less confrontational would be nice given we're here to work together on the defence of Proxima III." Pickett stated, telling his side to back down.

Several minutes later, Xavier announced "they'll be entering normal space in a few seconds. Fire at will into this sector." He highlighted a volume of space on the shared data plot.

The Centauri and Drakh exited their Slipspace (aka hyperspace) portals to run headlong about a second later into a wall of Earth Alliance plasma, particle, laser and nuclear missile fire. The Coalition fired next in rolling broadsides, smashing Antimatter, Proton and Neutron Artillery, assorted Plasma-Resonance-based Munitions, be they phased or not, kinetic armour-piercing high explosive shells (Gauss Cannons), proton-based explosive shells and two types of plasma beams into their targets. The Earth Alliance force couldn't afford to be mute with shock as they fired interceptor grids and went evasive when the Centauri and Drakh returned fire.

The fighters of the locals never made contact with one another even though the Centauri and Drakh units sped to the attack, because they were hit head-on by a colossal _cloud_ of more than 400000 starfighters. Even though the Raiders were stronger than any individual or even small squadron of Coalition fighters, the Sentries (translation for the Centauri "Sentri" fighter came out to "Sentry") were not, and sheer weight of numbers disintegrated most of the targets via strategic bomber fire (fighter and gunship fire accounted for the rest) within the timeframe needed for the cloud to move past the hostiles toward their fleet.

Drakh anti-fighter weapons were remarkably efficient, as they swatted over a hundred fighters from space every second, using their sensors to pick the targets up at the close ranges they were engaging at. Even Revenants and Geminis with active stealth could be detected at sufficiently short range. The Drakh were mostly having such success due to the sheer numbers of the swarm and the fact that evasives couldn't be coordinated so that everything would miss given the sheer volume of fire being thrown out. There was also the issue of anti-capital fire passing through the cloud, being absorbed by it more often than the Coalition command crew would have liked.

Seeing their initial elements being overrun, the rest of the Centauri-Drakh fleet exited Slipspace, ramming some of the swarm aside with varying amounts of damage as they fired all weapons forward even while exiting that space. This had the effect of carving several swaths out of the swarm, but there were still too many, far too many. Even though their weapons were individually not enough to immediately pierce the thick armour locals used (as the bombers were designed with much larger splash damage in mind and thus didn't have nearly as focused power output as, say, Heavy Oblivion Cannons) they were eroding them at an altogether alarming rate.

Aboard the _Evanston_, General Pickett had a hand splayed over his forehead in a continuous facepalm while he yelled orders for fleet elements to manoeuvre to cover each other and coordinate fire with other fleet elements. Captain Drake was also ordering his crews with regards to power supply and the other details of space combat. Neither man was exactly sure how to feel regarding the ridiculously huge horde tactic being used.

"So what song are you playing on the Centauri bridges?" Xavier asked, noting the lowered combat efficiency of the Centauri from what they had been expecting.

"Throughout their ships, blaring from every speaker at maximum possible volume without burning out the speaker, is the song _Deify_. So they're basically forced to resort to texting commands to the crew members, most likely after shooting out the speakers to not be half-deafened by the hideously loud noise."

"What are the lyrics like?" Xavier asked as he manoeuvred several elements of his Battle Groups—each was divided in twenty equally-sized control groups to facilitate micromanagement using the big holographic tactical display in the center of the bridge or by larger control groups on his main command terminal.

"One of the repeated lines is 'I won't let them deify you', I thought it fitting of the lunatic Centauri Emperor."

"Agreed, although I still question why you like ancient Earth music so much."

_Probably because it made it onto your lover's pre-incarnation's factional playlist a long, long time ago in a universe far, far away?_ "Meh, it had a lot of real meaning at a more critical junction of history where humanity could easily have gone extinct, unlike a lot of later moments, excluding the end of the Infinite War. Only under a Cybran or Aeon victory could humanity have survived the Seraphim invading… but that's not the point here." _However, if Hannah had been losing to Ariel I would have come out of hiding hauled my ass to Earth to project a Max Protect to shield Princess Burke and help channel Black Sun's output into basically brainwashing everyone within range of the QGN._

Yeah, some abilities were flat-out broken, as agreed upon by most objective viewers. Getting the universe to basically say "_**NO.**_" to an exceedingly large amount of energy was one of those abilities. That didn't matter much in the here and now though since Xavier didn't need to know this. He was beginning to get annoyed by the losses he was taking and decided to push the reinforcement button before indicating the desired target area on his tactical displays. He also went about queuing the firing of all the Plan Cs' missiles before jamming his thumb on the Big Red Button.

The result was dumping another nearly half a million assorted starfighters and forty strategic missiles on top of the heads of the Drakh and Centauri, along with bringing the 19th and 20th Battle Groups into action. With Short-range Slipspace Jammers active, the four Coalition Battle Groups closed the range and formed an envelopment to prevent escape while the high-megaton-level warheads flew at their targets. Drakh fire became abruptly more accurate as they began detecting the Coalition warships bearing down on them, but it wasn't even close to adequate to stop the giant envelopment from swallowing them up due to the sheer numerical disparity. One Drakh warship may have been worth several Coalition warships, but after being hit with multiple massed attack runs by a deluge of bombs, there just weren't enough to fight off the fist closing on them.

As soon as the bag was closed on the invaders the battle was effectively over, but no surrender attempts came, and therefore none were accepted as the strategic missiles detonated amongst the hulls of Centauri and Drakh ships. The blast was good for flash-banging their sensors and frying half their electronics if nothing else and throwing off their aim, as well as dealing a good bit of direct blast damage to the nearest exposed hulls. Cybran standard EMP Flux Warheads were marginally lower yield than other factional warheads, but the stun effect that could work even through structural fields meant they were generally favoured over other types. Unfortunately, in space, there was no medium for a concussive shock wave, so detonations needed to be very close to hulls to be effective (hence why plasma cannons couldn't tolerate interceptors well). As a result the fight lasted roughly another half-minute before the last of the enemies gave up the ghost.

The Coalition grappled their own wreckage or reclaimed it outright, while also seizing some Drakh wreckage for analysis. While this was happening, the few Earth Alliance ships that had taken hits were using shuttles to check their hulls while the rest basically sat there in a state which General Pickett would have termed at any less momentous time to be "Thumbs-up-their-asses and slack-jawed".

Well, if one point had been very eloquently made clear in that meat grinder, it was that Earth Alliance couldn't so much as hope to touch the Coalition in terms of raw might. "I hope President Clark's going to be intelligent enough to realize that trying to antagonize them is useless." Pickett said quietly "Just the starfighters of that fleet could swarm Earth and that'll be all she wrote if we provoke them enough." There was nothing else that he could say, really.

"This is Grand Crusader Xavier Fran, are you all okay? Some of the shield coverage we gave you failed during the battle… sorry about that. We'll stick more projectors to your hulls in future co-op battles with Earth Alliance units on our side." He had dropped all stealth on his units, and to the Earth Alliance people right now the swarms of starfighters docking with their mother ships looked like nothing less than a lot of pepper due to the colour schemes.

General Pickett nodded, feeling the man's title carried a lot more weight now that they'd seen the amount of firepower he had backing him up "We are all doing much better than we would have been otherwise. Thank you for your aid."

"We did what was right, now, we must move to support the Drazi against the imminent weight of most of the Centauri offensive to be directed against them. The Drazi will never see the Centauri coming, _because there won't be a Centauri fleet available to attack the Drazi_. If you don't need a hand or a few hundred thousand with anything else for now, then farewell, General Pickett, Captain Drake."

"Farewell, Grand Crusader, thanks again for the help." Pickett said. Xavier nodded and hung up.

"Well, I don't know if I should be quaking in my boots at this or be glad that they're at least humans who are in control of the power they hold." Captain Drake said.

"Don't think that so quickly, Captain, they have plenty of aliens on board if the news broadcasts B5 is putting out are true. I can however still agree that we should be somewhat glad humanity's got such power at its fingertips, however estranged these humans may be from Earth."

"The Coalition ships have disappeared from all sensors!" The sensor officer called "There was a brief glow on them before they disappeared!"

"I suspect the Centauri are about to get a humbling." Captain Drake remarked dryly.

Pickett snorted "About time too, if you ask me."

"Agreed, sir."

* * *

_Local date June 21, 2260, Coalition date June 1, 3872_

The expected Centauri fleet rally just prior to the planned mass invasion of Drazi space never manifested, because they were still running around like a fly with its head cut off trying to figure out what the hell had happened behind their lines less than an hour ago. It seemed Centauri communications were better than expected… The only thing that meant was that at this rate they'd need some sort of distraction before they could go in and blow up Cartagia's face without taking unacceptable losses. They'd also need to remove the Shadow hold over the Centauri first before they could install someone more amicable. What that meant was that they would need to brow-beat the Shadows and Vorlons into submission or at least understanding that there was a new baby-sitter in town for the "Younger Races".

That meant they needed just about another two weeks to roughly double their fleet strength again before they could really begin considering challenging the two old races for good. Hopefully the Vorlons would not fall within that time… From the data collected from the previous battle by Miranda and co, if life was a real-time strategy video game, then the Vorlons would be the Powerhouse faction, the Shadows would be Balanced, and the Coalition would be Subversive. The only issue with that analysis was that the Coalition was probably closer to Horde status, but that didn't make too much of a difference in the grand scheme of things, except for numbers.

In other news, Kosh Naranek had the dubious honour of being the first Vorlon in a very long time to tell his entire people that they were reactionary idiots, after hearing from them of the big showdown at the fringes of Vorlon Core Space. They were, unsurprisingly, not pleased with that assessment. Fortunately, they were still rational enough to hear him out, and so he tried to explain to them that looking forward more was better than looking back all the time, for obstacles in your way generally came from ahead. They brushed him off as having spent too much time among the younger races, as he had expected. He felt sorry for his people, for them having to learnt he lesson in blood that stifling one's offspring did not help them grow. If this was the price that had to be paid for true mental maturity as a race, then he would look the other way as they were made to pay up. It was a reality that weighed heavily on his mind, and he wished it would weigh on the minds of his people some more. He wished they would open their eyes and realize the universe had changed…

* * *

A/N: Replies!

**KleverKilva**: Coalition engineering uses structural fields, inertial control (aka quantum drives), and so on to such an extent that stripping them out would radically change the internal layout of the object, enough so that you might as well design something from scratch. Also, tearing out all the weapons mounts would make significant parts of internal structure redundant, so… housing them in several stripped-down CZARs (or just shoving them into the holds of a few CZARs) isn't something they're going to bother with in case the prisoners find ways to circumvent onboard systems and find out about something, anything, however unlikely that is. They have no interest in letting the Psi-Corps' less innocent members lay their filthy eyes on their technology up close.

**Spacebar (both reviews)**: 1) The cooldown cycles of the Shadow beam weapons will be explained in some detail once Dusk grows up enough to have them functional. 2) For the record, Sea Urchin larvae look like ovoid blobs. Killing minds of their own ships? Well then you can say Binary Helix was killing the minds of Rachni on Noveria by imprinting them differently from their norm. 3) Many, except in Delenn's case. Fewer for the more open-minded like Lennan and to an extent Neroon, but hey… 4) Refer to above Rachni argument. A) Not quite looking for a pilot, but they will talk. B) Whole? Who said anything about whole? Don't make me laugh.

**Nenfaer**: They aren't really killing their own ships per se, just raising them with different ideals than they could have otherwise. The Shadows, Vorlons, Reapers and Yonji Sinhindrea are VERY interlinked in their back-stories, so have your sunglasses ready (although it'll take a while before I get there) for the epic-ness of the history I'm planning on unleashing upon you all.

REVIEW!


	18. We Wait, We Are Bored

A/N: As you can tell by the title, this chapter is pretty much filler.

Before someone tears into me again about things being hard to keep track of across all these crosses and characters, I urge you to go read _Romance of the Three Kingdoms_. THAT is vastly more complicated than anything I'm creating.

I revised Exhibit A in "So We Look To The Future" to being set in 2183 like Mass Effect canon, instead of 2283. The reason? Well, **2077 (End of 4th Tiberium War) + 106 (Liara's age in ME1) = 2183**. Coincidence? _**I think not…**_

Also, I got another review saying the Coalition was overpowered. I agree, it is, just like how civilizations with (relative) mass production defeated those without in the colonial era a few centuries ago due to both quantity and quality of weapons. The whole objective of war is to make the odds as stacked in your favour as possible. And no, the Coalition does **NOT** have a qualitative advantage over the Shadows or Vorlons, and they'd be torn to bits by Minbari weapons, provided they get detected. Their largest edge by far in the Andromeda Galaxy is the "STARFIGHTER DEATH CLOUD" and their stealth (which is VASTLY nastier than the Minbari advantage during the local Earth-Minbari War).

* * *

Chapter 18: We Wait, We Are Bored

_Centauri Space, Local date June 22, 2260, Coalition date June 2, 3872_

"Still wish you'd let me jump around and shoot the Drakh a bit more instead of that hit-and-run job." Helena was complaining to Kasumi. "We could have destroyed those shipyards completely, left no evidence you might have ever been there."

"I messed up, okay? I wasn't sure how much they had in their networked databanks, so I told you to play it safe instead of sending the yards straight to hell, in case I couldn't download it all fast enough." Kasumi sighed and shook her head. "Why don't you question Jack on her maturity instead?"

Helena rolled her eyes "What maturity?" Jack had sculpted several of the larger asteroids she'd bombarded into very crude renditions of a one-fingered salute or carved other images into them, ranging from the factional logos to, well… things that said Jack could probably do well for herself as an artist. At least, that was what she was claiming it was. Jacob was saying that they looked more like potatoes, in other words, that the art quality was indistinguishable from before sculpting, much to the ex-convict's consternation. It had been a bit surreal, especially to Jacob, when Jack began lecturing Jacob on the physics of shattering stones and how she didn't exactly have time to use the HMLs as fine chisels.

Staring at her was probably not the best idea though if you didn't want to be glared at excessively and lectured further… "Hey, stop gaping at me! I might be a bit unstable but that doesn't mean I'm retarded! Look at Commander T'Soni , she admits she's 'rather unhinged' and I most certainly assure you that she is far from an uneducated idiot." She snapped at the man.

Helena turned her head toward Kasumi's hologram again, ignoring the other two in the holo-conference "Right, so back on track… I know it's a good way to scare the Centauri out of their wits by making their stuff randomly blow up with no apparent culprits, but I think we could have pressed the attack by shifting to a different firing position to repeat the shelling burst a minute later, that would probably have been enough time for you, Kasumi. The speed and power of rumour and fear are incredible, as you well know."

"It's most cost-effective in the first strike though, and also least risky. It's like poking someone from stealth and cloak, poke them once and they jump about a metre and a half in the air and look around, poke them a dozen times in short succession and they'll star swinging wildly, and enemy unpredictability is not good for us." Kasumi argued back "For example, you could have gotten my Creeps caught while they were still draining the Centauri databases. Drakh sensors are enough to see through active stealth better than the younger local races, so if they'd moved around where we weren't in sensor shadows, if the Drakh have them, and were in range…"

"Fine, whatever… stealth ops always end up getting priority in planning… it's the same everywhere." Helena grumbled before flinching a bit at Jack laughing uproariously or maybe maniacally at something. "And the world is right again…"

* * *

_Near Babylon Five, Local date July 2, 2260, Coalition date June 12, 3872_

"Well, it's decided. Everything has gone to hell back home and we're on our own." Commander T'Soni said as the clock ticked to 00:00:00 again and the Coalition Date changed to June 12.

"Hold on, we're finally getting a signal." Xavier said. "Text only, repeating."

"I should have known better than to provoke reality by saying that." Commander T'Soni shook her head ruefully.

"Large-scale insurrections throughout the three human factions, Terra Firma is on the loose, the Order of the Illuminate is resurgent, several Cybran Nodes have gone rouge, probably indoctrinated…" Xavier read quickly, feeling a icy prickling of dread spreading inside him, Cybrans weren't immune to indoctrination? "Reaper War has begun and is doing large amounts of damage to the galaxy at large. The New Covenant is holding their own, but they have to deal with the remnants of the Old Covenant and are unable to conduct offensive operations yet. Expected time to pacification of the rebels is about a month and a half from now. Fortunately they don't have control over any Ship Gantries, but… ah fuck, they've sabotaged the Quantum Gate Network and managed to jam Quantum Jump Drives, so we're back to wholly classical ACU warfare. Hang on, I'm getting new schematics… finally, Light Carriers and… Pocket Battleships? Couldn't they have come up with a better name? We've also got permission to expand our maximum Gantry count to two hundred."

"I feel sorry for the locals." Commander T'Soni stated grimly. "We should try to wrap this whole mess here up as quickly as we feasibly can… there is a Vorlon-related race I know of back home that need to be exterminated for their own presumption and their unchangeably predatory ways."

"I don't think there is any particular connection between the two clauses you just said, because if any of those species were interstellar back in the Milky Way we would have been in contact with them and annihilated them already."

She shrugged her white-clad shoulders "Meh, I specified it was in the Milky Way." _Although it is._

Xavier's cheek twitched a bit "Ah, the Yonji Sinhindrea then?"

"There are others, but they are the current largest concern, yes." _Although they weren't what I was talking about, they are much worse at least in scale, and therefore they must be burnt from existence first. Races who would prey upon other sentients and refuse to change will eventually become threats and need to be culled anyways. The Yonji-Stain PREFERS to prey upon sentients, and believe all life must be destroyed, a foolish notion for a consumer species, therefore they must be destroyed… The Pak'ma'ra would do well to watch what happens to their OTHER cousins—not the Yonji—once I finish with them._ Unfortunately for the locals from that particular shield-world, be they any of the multiple Forerunner-derived strains, she hadn't really had time in the past to go and, well, clean up the stain on the universe that existed on their world, and hadn't briefed anyone else to do it either. They needed to wait for the natural progression of history to provide the locals with a opportunity for change, then HELP the locals grasp it. "Uplifting" primitives tended to not work out well for the mental health of said primitives, even if they were almost genetically compatible with the base forms (read: they were compatible with pre-Quantum Age humans) of the technologically advanced Forerunner-based strains. It was quite astounding how many shield-worlds' Monitors had found Earth or Rannoch and brought specimens home… it was also _painfully_ astounding how none of them found Thessia. That was probably due to the three Keyships parked on it for a long time never having activated their beacons, and the planet had not been designated as a shielded world, so the Monitors hadn't expected any survivors to be there.

Sorting out the nuances of history was a pain in the ass sometimes, and Commander T'Soni was never quite so glad that she'd never even tried uploading all her data gained in her long disembodiment into the Cybran Network, it would probably fry the careers if not minds of many historians. She suspected Hannah was having a hard time dealing with historians being given full recordings of data for over 3000 years of the Milky Way's history collected by her Creep spy drones and their staging platforms. There was also the issue of Crystal probably still being upset at the Legendary Commander given she'd found out Zeratul had Crystal's old tub and given him a message directing Kerrigan toward Earth II without telling Crystal. She'd told the Librarian just before leaving on this expedition, and had been quite amused at how much indignation her older sister (well, they shared a common Origin although derived from different lifetimes thereof…) could put on the face of her Psi-hologram.

Xavier had nodded before turning away when he saw her thinking, administrating various issues and checking up on the status of the shipyards Kelly was dealing with. Unfortunately, he had forgotten that he'd previously proved with Hannah's younger sister Jane to be a bit too much of a nag for redheads to bother putting up with. The result was that after twenty minutes of asking various miscellaneous questions, after Kelly had given him a overview of everything going quite well, she got annoyed. One of the advantages of orange or red hair was that people for some odd reason didn't expect as much patience, and thus you could occasionally get away with cutting people off where say a blue-haired person would seem impetuous or rude (for the record, anti-hairism movements did exist within the Coalition). Since Xavier ran a fairly informal outfit (at least among themselves), she told him her opinion quite bluntly:

"Grand Crusader, I would like to inform you that I am capable of wiping my own ass without you holding my hand, and if you should try to hold my hand in that task I am sure your lover back home will be glad to accept said appendage as a sacrifice to placate her once you return." Kelly thought this unlikely, but it had been a good try at cutting him off in her opinion.

Xavier blinked as she interrupted his roll of questions and reminders, then realized he was getting too naggy and smiled a little "I don't think Hannah's interested in cutting off my hand and mounting it as a trophy, she'd be more prone to feeling sorry for your difficult medical condition and wondering what happened to the Doc that disabled him from fixing you up." His smile disappeared as he bowed his head slightly "Sorry for nagging, Kelly."

"Good comeback, though. Don't worry so much, sir, we're doing fairly well for ourselves so far. Things back home will take care of themselves." Dusk did have a minor incident a few hours ago with her approximation of indigestion, apparently she ate too much, so she's decided to fast for a bit and wait for things to straighten themselves out again, but that was very minor and didn't affect the "doing well for ourselves" clause.

Xavier knew full well that since he'd practically vented his worries onto the psychologist-trained young woman he was asking for a chat about the topic that didn't fall under the category of the other person telling him to man up and take it. "I'm not worried about Hannah's ability to take care of herself in the field, I'm more worried about what the boys and their crew are up to this time trying to pull the heads of the Citadel Races out of their asses. And when I worry, I tend to start being an annoying perfectionist and try to make sure everything's going as smoothly as possible, cut down on risks… Hannah used to scold me for it sometimes, Mother did the same thing back when she still considered herself my mother."

Kelly grimaced "The Coalition is tied up with its own insurrections while the rest of the galaxy is in total war… I expect even the Princess and Doctor Brackman are worried over that problem. Don't worry about your sons, sir, they're able to take care of themselves and their crews, and their lovers won't let anything bad happen to them. Also, they've probably managed to use their nice-guy skills to charm half the rest of the women on their crew into being super-protective of them, so they don't need to worry about any manner of ground infantry operations. Armoured warfare, well, we're the best in our galaxy at that, so that shouldn't be a problem either."

"All we can do is make sure this galaxy gets its affairs in order, which is why I nagged, Kelly." Xavier steered the conversation around. "Since everything's going well, then I guess all I can do is hang up."

"Or alternatively, leave this channel open so that I may relieve my boredom by eavesdropping." Kelly did her best imitation of Joker's shit-eating grin, although she didn't seem to get it quite right since Xavier rolled his eyes, smiled a bit, and hung up. The orange-haired young woman sighed, apparently Hannah was a bit softer toward Joker than Xavier was toward her.

Then again, if Hannah had had daughters and known Joker had jerked off to thoughts of said daughters before, Kelly suspected she'd probably make Joker request a transfer. Fortunately, the twins' dad was about as nice as the twins typically were and didn't mind that awkward fact very much. The orange-haired girl had once been stuck sitting across the table in the mess at dinner while Tali and Liara were talking about their relationships i.e. very quietly comparing notes since they felt comfortable enough with her to do so near her. It had been a bit of an awkward experience since she had been torn between the urge to hide somewhere, preferably go back to work, to get away from the awkwardness and the urge to squeal at how the other women were so obviously satisfied with their choices in men. It had not been a pleasant experience in terms of awkwardness level when the two other women had questioned her ("You're the psychologist on board, you should know…") about the twins' popularity with the general female population as the only inter-factional hybrids who were done with puberty. The fact that they were born to the Queen of Black Sun and a popular Aeon ACU pilot meant that after their father's supposed death his fan base had transferred… Kelly had joined up after the transfer, but, well…

Back onboard the _Surveyor_, Xavier suddenly thought of something he could probably get away with asking Kelly without embarrassing himself, and pinged her for a connection. She picked up a second later "Kelly, what can you tell me about how the general female population looks at my sons?" The question had arisen because he had once had a bit of a fan following for being an, to quote his fan website (which he would often deny ever visiting) "dashing, skilled, honourable, and generally upstanding specimen of human male" and he had occasionally wondered for the last few months whether or not that transferred to his sons given the stories he'd wormed out of Jack, Miranda, Jacob, etc. Asking the psychologist-trained crewmember once assigned to his sons' ship seemed a reasonable way to find out given network access to the Coalition Internet was still not established.

The orange-haired girl blinked back at him a couple times, opened her mouth, shut it again, and sighed, thinking _Well, I know he and I are not friendly enough to communicate over light-years with just our minds, only lovers who've known each other for many years, and mothers with their children can typically be able to do that, and it requires both parties be high-powered, particularly in terms of communications. I sincerely hope he doesn't have a Psi-receiver relay somewhere on this ship transmitting its received thoughts to him at this moment… because it's like he read my mind._ "This is going to be off the record, right?"

Xavier nodded once. Little did he realize how awkward a conversation he was about to start. Yes, he expected it to be awkward, but he wasn't expecting to be talking to a former fan-girl, well, current fan-girl if being a bit star-struck by a friend still counted.

* * *

_Near Babylon Five, Local date July 6, 2260, Coalition date June 16, 3872_

"The Shadows have begun to withdraw slightly from the Vorlon-Shadow border, it seems a ceasefire might be in the works here." Xavier was pointing out the highlighted areas of the sector map where the battle lines were moving back. Space warfare was a three-dimensional affair, so some of the pull-back areas for the Shadows were in terms of the Galactic Up and Galactic Down directions. The Coalition still used North, South, East and West instead of the other races' Core-ward, Rim-ward, Spin-ward and so on definitions. However, they had decided that the old relative-to-Coalition-Space north-south systems would only be retained for the Milky Way for now and new galaxies they reached would have North defined as Coreward, South as Rim-ward, East as Spin-ward and West as Retrograde. Up was defined using the right-hand-rule between North and East (palm north, fingers east, thumb up), and Down was the other way.

"I'm really glad our fleet production is so high. The locals, particularly the Minbari, still have more than enough ships to completely destroy our fleets if they can detect us." Commander T'Soni glowered at that fact, pointing out the fleet numbers for the Minbari Federation. "I really hope this unrest with the older races gets them to wise up and stop their Forerunner-like behaviour."

The available Coalition forces' only way to wreck the Minbari instead of being completely flattened was to stay out of their capital ship range—fortunately relatively short—and swarm them in-close with starfighters. The forty megaton per second total output of all the anti-capital neutron beam weapons a Sharlin could fire on its forward arc were enough so that it could sweep through most of the lesser Coalition vessels like Monkeylords through lines of Tier 1 tanks or Tier 2 Bots (Ilshavoh excluded). Well, in terms of traverse per second, though the targets were much larger, the general idea was similar. Against Battle Cruisers, Escort Carriers and above it would be like carving through Tier 2 tanks, but the general idea was still the same, the Sharlin's firepower was simply too great. Yes, the Minbari ships were incapable of standing up to starfighter swarms, but hopefully it would never come to an actual engagement. Still, it didn't hurt to be prepared for anything, because peace had to be backed by power, even if you had no intention of using your power to force yourself on others as the Shadows were busy doing and the Vorlons had done.

"What Forerunner-like behaviour?" Miranda asked, having taken an interest in the ancients after coming over on this expedition.

"Demilitarizing their protectorates and assuming that they are all-knowing, I'm still surprised they held out as long as they did with how imbecilic the Senate was, blockading my Origin and her partner at every turn, every attempt at a new strategy, in the name of tradition of all things. And don't even ask about what happened in other universes with the whole damned race of idiots… ugh, just thinking about the morons makes me lose brain cells. Did you know that my Origin's distant pre-incarnation and your son's distant pre-incarnation had to lead a resistance movement that made it possible for mankind to exist despite the Halos. The Forerunners forgot to get samples of themselves for the restoration, because they believed themselves unworthy of continuing with how they'd failed the galaxy? What they didn't realize was the fact that if the resistance hadn't existed the Forerunners would never have existed either thanks to the problems of time looping?" She had turned toward Xavier for the last 60% of the rant. "It's almost as bad as all the time loops this universe has."

* * *

A/N: Yes, that is a major, in terms of plot previewing, rant regarding the C&C series fic, the SI Archives!

* * *

"No I did not know that." The Grand Crusader sounded bemused, and the Legendary Commander facepalmed, sighing heavily. "Well, anyways, the Shadows are backing down, but the Vorlons aren't advancing, which makes it even more likely that this is a ceasefire. There can only be one conclusion drawn from this."

The Gardevoir nodded, continuing the briefing for him "They are perceiving us as a threat to their status quo and would like to eliminate us from the equation while they still believe they are able. In capital ships, they are, but once you factor in the combination of millions of starfighters and our stealth which requires their detector vessels to counter, the balance is currently roughly even. Jack, how is the blockading of the Centauri going?"

"They have their remaining battle fleets escorting convoys between their worlds, the Drakh aren't helping, although they are orbiting the Centauri planets. We can conduct terror attacks by planetary bombardment using Mavor shells, but that's not going to fly thanks to our insistence on keeping this lesson soft enough. If the Centauri had a favourite moon that would be great, but they don't, which is a pity."

"Trying for the same thing you did to that Hanar moon?" Miranda prodded on purpose.

Jack shrugged "Hey, it's called artistic license, alright? Besides, the uptight, holier-than-thou jellyfishes needed to relax a bit, and there is nothing that works a stick out of an ass faster than making them freak out often enough they get tired of it… well maybe laxatives—" most of the virtual conference's room's participants snorted and Miranda rolled her eyes at this amendment "—but that's not the point."

"Can we disrupt their convoys enough to prevent supplies from moving around and cripple their economy?" Miranda asked.

Kasumi shook her head "No use, it will only hurt the common people more, as the rich and their private armies will get priority with the limited supplies. Even Centauri Prime has enough servants on it that starving it into submission is not an option."

"They'd just mix in exotic shipments the decadents demand with the food shipments and such. The power of money is next to infinite in societies that are both still in scarcity and don't have the sense, like the Sangheili would, to realize that 'live life, don't survive it' are the terms on opposite sides of an equal sign." She paused, looking around the table with her crimson eyes "I think we might as well be sharing one big brain here with the consensus we seem to possess." Commander T'Soni tapped on her chest gem idly as she spoke. "Come on, guys, any alternate opinions?"

"I vote for blockading the Centauri's luxury shipments, then attacking anything we know has luxury shipments on board, and waiting for a peasant uprising due to food riots. It will cut down on the number of Centauri that will need to be brought into line after the mess is over, particularly the number of Centauri nobles. The fewer people there are, the easier to change their old ways, their old, unsustainable culture." Jack said the less popular opinion out loud.

"Yes, but it will make them hate us all the more." Miranda argued back "And I doubt the Centauri are sufficiently non-sheeple for propaganda from us to change their minds from the government line."

"You'd be surprised, Miranda, by what slaves will believe so that they can fight for their freedom." Caprica snapped suddenly.

"I vote that we pull surgical strikes, and by that I mean drilling with say a Broadsword's plasma cannon, at all ship cargo holds that carry luxury goods between Centauri worlds requested by the Emperor or any nobility, and try to only keep it to those holds." Helena put in. From the nods around the table, however hesitant, it seemed a new consensus had been tentatively achieved. With their computing technology, it was possible to crack the shipping manifests and determine by onboard logs which cargoes were carried where within reasonable amounts of time for the interceptions to occur in. The only potential problem was that they'd put the luxuries in the centermost holds of a ship, in that case they'd just drill through the hull until they hit those holds, trying very hard to avoid blowing the ships up in the process.

"And if mass starvation spreads across Centauri Prime while the military forcibly holds them down, we'll either have a deep hate of the current system brewing due to massacres and a popular uprising or not enough lower-class Centauri left alive on Centauri Prime for the planet to be worth shielding from nearly twenty-nine kilometres of our wrath." Xavier stated grimly. Said wrath would come in the form of one _Ascendant Justice_, more imposing than a good-sized Coalition fleet and somewhat more efficient at glassing planets deeply.

Say what you will about Plasma projectors, including that they were generally not used in ship-to-ship warfare by the Covenant before Coalition contact, but they did have a tendency to grossly over-penetrate. And that… was exactly what was needed for a good, deep glassing, not like the Coalition, which could expend ten times the total energy yield in their regular munitions yet still only glass to a fraction of the depths plasma projectors could manage. Having ammunition designed to be relatively (Einstein was probably spinning the atoms he still had left on Earth after the Seraphim War around, given his grave was likely vaporized long ago, at this stretch of the use of the term "relative") environmentally friendly was a pain in the ass sometimes. That was part of the reason why Coalition weapon yields hadn't climbed as much as a merging of expertise could have theoretically produced after the Seraphim War, they had to keep residual damage down as much as possible.

To Xavier's slaughter-inured mind, glassing might have been a bit too merciful if the Centauri turned on their own lower class citizens and massacred them to hold onto their power and luxuries. He had played all sorts of insane, bloodthirsty thoughts through his mind when contemplating what he would do if the Centauri nobility chose that path. It had all gone away when he rationalized that it had once been what he'd thought of Cybrans and the UEF. Well, perhaps the old UEF had deserved it with how oppressive they could be, but the Cybrans… all they'd ever wanted was to live. Yes, the Centauri were different, but they were still people all the same and therefore glassing or even cleansing—his gut twisted as his mind used _that_ term—was not remotely an option unless they were absolutely certain that the nobility and their loyalist military enforcers had become the overwhelming majority on Centauri Prime. In that case, the Centauri would learn to not put their eggs in one basket, or rather, their fish in one barrel. That process of killing off the lower classes and suppressing the revolts would probably take long enough that the Coalition's presence, growing nearly exponentially under his command, would be able to overrun Centauri Prime's defences, even the Drakh fleets surrounding it.

The moment of silence at the table ended with Jack clapping her hands together a few times slowly. "Bout time we saw where your boys got the combination of hard and soft from. I was thinking you were completely soft for a while, glad to see I'm wrong." _Then again Hannah Shepard is known for being consistently tough and/or a bit insane so it's possible that they got the mix from a moderately soft father and their mother._ The tattooed woman thought idly.

As she preferred, the ex-convict was summarily ignored as Thel Lodam put in his two cents, having remained essentially quiet for the previous parts of the conference "That leads us to another problem, what to do about these Drakh that aid the Shadows. I say we give them a chance, if when the Shadows cooperate with us they cooperate, then we'll more or less leave them be, if not, they will reap what they have sown. We will eradicate their fleets and spacefaring capability if they insist on pushing us. If they are too foolish to have established a few back-up colonies before dedicating their whole race's fleets to war, then it is their own problem. Of course, that's assuming the Shadows weren't the ones who ordered them not to build any colonies, stupidity from orders is a different level of idiocy than doing it themselves." He waggled his mandibles as he shook his head, thinking about how much that applied to his own people and how much they had paid in the senseless and one-side—now that he'd looked up the records—war with the Coalition.

"NO." The growl made the Sangheili instinctively recoil at the aura that signalled the approach of a superior predator before he brought himself back under full control and she toned it down. She dialled her bio-electric fields so that she was no longer quite at risk of impaling something on the prongs her hair formed over her shoulders or the hooked prow of green, charged fibres over her nose. Her crimson eyes still flashed dangerously though "I'll have you know that reduction to the Stone Age is what happened to the Yonji Sinhindrea repeatedly, and the only thing that came out of it was a race obsessed with destroying all other life, incredibly stupid given they are predators, but there you have it. Selective pressure for paranoia and aggressiveness toward other members of their race does not make a peaceful, reasonable civilization, Thel Lodam. The rest of you would do well to remember this too."

The Sangheili inclined his head "Yes, Commander T'Soni."

"When are the psychos arriving anyways?" Kasumi questioned.

The Gardevoir grimaced "Soon, painfully soon. Sometime within the next month, I believe, they will begin entering this galaxy." There was a moment of silence after that "But we will be ready for them. Our gantries are cranking out about eight hundred hull frames per day half-baked, although they will take many days to be combat-ready, our existing ships are going to be very helpful for making them ready. By the time we have to meet the Yonji in battle we should expect to have a force of at least thirty thousand warships available with more coming, depending on when they actually begin launching an offensive against us after they beat up the Vorlons and Shadows. We'd still get routed by the Minbari in a straight fight due to beam weapons yields and all, but we'd rape them right back in return."

"Nanolathing…" Thel shook his head. "It is testament to humans' and the Coalition's maturity as a race and then a civilization that they did not sprawl themselves across the known universe or destroy themselves with sentient self-replicating machines given what you call Quantum Tech."

Xavier snorted at that "I think it's more a testament to the sheer amount of science fiction we managed to produce to terrify ourselves into actually being cautious with technology. Mind you, not cautious enough to avoid being a self-fulfilling prophecy, but enough to not have our scientists be a bunch of idiot-savants. I think the mandatory and very disturbing reading lists, plus all the movies, helped in that regard. And if there was one thing the three factions actually agreed on, it was not to expand beyond our Quadrant of the galaxy while we were still at war, because we couldn't afford to meet another potentially hostile alien race that could be more powerful than we were. That was the only thing, other than planet-destroying weapons, that we agreed on, though the Quadrant Agreement was the only agreement that actually held until the war ended." He paused before getting back on track "So, when is the blockade of Centauri Prime going up? And how many ships will we need to commit to it?"

"Given known Drakh sensor capabilities, at least a Battle Group or two." Miranda replied. "As soon as possible, I propose we put Jack in charge of that operation."

"Thanks, cheerleader, you surprise me."

"Not that hard of a task, I'm sure."

Jack did her best sagely nod "Good to see you're still sane."

Miranda shrugged "Not that I could do the same for you."

"Sounds about right." The two weren't exactly best friends, but if you fought alongside, not to mention lived near, someone for long enough, and with both parties used to needing to get over things, any hostility eventually de-escalates to a friendly sort of poking at each other for kicks and giggles. Of course, saying this (especially the giggles part) to either of the Aeon women's faces (both only Aeon by heritage) was likely to be strongly detrimental to one's physical and/or mental health.

Xavier smacked his lips once and set his jaw at the devolvement of the conference "I suppose there's not much more to go over? There wasn't anything particularly wrong with any of the routine reports, so I suppose things are going okay?" Everyone nodded "Alright, before this turns into another chatter session, not that it isn't enough of one already, everyone's dismissed." Everyone's avatars moved their arms, pushing some buttons that only they could see before the avatars winked out of the virtual space projected on the inside of their helmets, or, in Commander T'Soni's case, goggles.

She preferred it to a helmet as a helmet felt too restrictive when her bio-electric fields went up to full battle charge instead of the usual standby level, thanks to her hair puffing out into combat configuration. "Well, that went better than we expected. We're going to do the same stuff you and I agreed on anyways, I suppose." The green-haired woman manually moved the loose prow of hair out of her face now that her bio fields were down to standby levels again as she spoke, after taking her goggles off as Xavier removed his own helmet.

"You never quite agreed with me on how to deal with Centauri Prime, Commander T'Soni. I remember you wanting a much more aggressive way, up to and including jumping in a huge mass of high explosive directly onto the palace via shoving it through a Quantum Gate built in deep space, since they have no ability whatsoever to repel Quantum Jumping. You based it on the idea that the Centauri wouldn't have any palace ground defence weapons, at least none charged all the time for fear of the capacitors being used as bombs to blow up the palace, and that no orbital defences would be pointed at the palace because they would fear a coup attempt."

"Enough, just because I'm a lot more inclined toward harsh, decisive action doesn't mean you can lord it over me in any way, shape or form, or have you forgotten your record just because a certain black-haired girl chose to overlook it?" He flinched at the mention of that. Yes, he had found cleansings distasteful and drawn them out (to give more time to evacuate) if possible, but he had always been very effective at keeping the other ACU pilots sent with him safe from counter-attacks, although he didn't assist in offensives against civilian targets. That meant the only thing he was remotely able to give the evacuations was more time instead of a good chance of pushing the invaders back. It also earned him the reputation that put him squarely on the Loyalist side of the Aeon civil war and later had him tasked to screening the Elite Four during the operation his old ACU got blown up in.

"Why would you bring that up now, Liara?" He asked quietly.

The crimson-eyed woman had a faraway look on her face "The past can't be forgotten, Xavier, however hard we might want to try to forget. If we can't hold onto the past, we'll repeat its mistakes, yet if we cling to it too much, we risk even greater mistakes, much like the mistakes of the Vorlons and their derivative races."

"Are you ever going to tell me which races are their derivatives? Because I can hazard a guess if you want." He mentally ran through a brief list of hypotheses.

"Might as well just confirm your guesses, then, Xavier. The derivative races of the Vorlons include the Pak'ma'ra and similar strains, and to a small genetic extent the Centauri…" He leered at her "don't look at me like that, where do you think their mating tentacle thing came from?"

Xavier smirked and rolled his eyes "…Right, go on…"

"They also include the Reapers and through them the various Reaper creations or part-creations i.e. Protoss, Zerg, and Flood. Last, and most dangerous, among their derivative strains are the Yonji Sinhindrea."

Xavier rubbed his eyes "…Fitting, for poetic justice at least."

Commander T'Soni bared her mouthful of polished white teeth in a broad and vicious grin at that "Agreed."

* * *

A/N: Did anyone else see the similarities between the Illithid and Pak'ma'ra? I did when I looked on the Wikipedia page for Illithids. Add a bit of psychic power and the more humanoid limbs of the Vorlons to the Pak'ma'ra and voila we have another species that, through consumption of sentients (I'm talking about slaughtering them FOR consumption, not the Pak'ma'ra eating of carrion) coupled with the absolute belief of their own superiority, makes it onto the "Exterminate" list of the Coalition unless they're willing to change radically… who are we kidding, they're on a one-way trip to the ash-heap as soon as the Coalition gets around to cleaning up ALL the Shield-Worlds (how do you think the Underdark is so large?) i.e. after Commander T'Soni comes home.

Review replies! (**WARNING: These contain almost as much information as the actual stories, it is actually fairly wise to read the reviews and replies even if it's not your review/reply!**)

**Achronus (Spacebar)**: 2) Will be explained. 4) Ah, okay then. A) Let's leave it at "somewhere in between" for now, will be expounded on later. B) Sounds about right. New Stuff) Yeah the starfighter swarms are the Coalition's biggest edge in space combat. However, blockading was answered in this chapter. The Drakh will not be so moronic about their 58-km Motherships this time or it would be too easy…

**Sajuuk**: Haven't played HOTS but can integrate no problem.

**Nenfaer**: I messed up in in-character behaviour, so now I tried my best to explain up at the beginning of this chapter.

**DaLintyMan**: NO OC RACES! I have enough trouble integrating the canon races already! Take the Draenei for example, ether I'll leave them out or say they're the result of Forerunner experiments with integrating Protoss DNA. Back in the Milky Way shit is burying the fan right now.

**KleverKilva**: Yeah they probably could, but at the moment Psi-Corps is not their main concern.

**Guest**: I agree they are overpowered, however they really don't have qualitative superiority. A single Sharlin could if fitted with adequate shields and sensors conceivably take down a good fleet of Coalition starships because continuous beam weapons are _hideously_ devastating to Coalition shields and structural fields. Vorlon and Shadow fleets are mainly dealt with by sheer numbers and starfighter death clouds, while the others need to be dealt with by mostly stealth and evading their heavier weapons if possible (not true against the Minbari, if they can see a Coalition ship then it's dead unless it jumps out of the weapon's line of fire before the shooting starts).

REVIEW!


	19. Fumbling in Ignorance

A/N: _**WARNING**_: Given I think I need to get started on SupCom: ME 3 before I can coordinate events there and here effectively, and I need to write at least the Azeroth arc of the time loop—The Earth II Arc is relatively unimportant in personality shaping for Hannah i.e. I've thought of it much more so I know what it'll do to her—to make my characterizations of post-time-travel Hannah accurate, this may go on hold for a while as I fill out a lot of the past. I'm sorry to make this announcement, but if you want a more up-close look at the action and a more peaceful pace than the large scale and frenetic speed at which the Coalition works, please read The Lost City of Hearthome which has had its first 3 chapters rewritten to my newer skill level. I might be able to post Chapter 20 and maybe 21, depending on how long it takes me to get to whichever one is to be titled "The Rim Job" (Commander T'Soni flings the truth of the Rim in the faces of the Vorlons and Shadows), but please note that after that, this is going to go on hiatus for a bit… Also, **too much World of Tanks doesn't help make time.**

**ADDITIONAL STUFF IN A/N AT END OF CHAPTER, BEFORE REVIEW REPLIES.**

XX

Chapter 19: Fumbling in Ignorance

_Near Babylon Five, Local date July 8, 2260, Coalition date June 18, 3872_

"Is there ANY reason we've been had THIS badly?" Xavier moaned as he once again looked over the shipping manifests and compared them to scan results from Jack's convoy raids over the last two days. Across the top of the report was scrawled in large letters of "Jacqueline Nought Font" (i.e. Jack's messy handwriting) the four characters "WTF?"

"The Centauri are being self-deluding fools?" Commander T'Soni answered from where she was trying (and failing) to nap, her long legs propped up on her desk top and her arms crossed over the bottom half of her chest gem i.e. just under her breasts. Her white dress's bottom half was spiralled a couple times around her legs so that she wasn't showing much other than her legging-clad feet. "Or that they want to make other civilizations' spies think they have more people than they actually do on their homeworld? We didn't actually get close enough to Centauri Prime to perform a reliable deep scan, because of the estimated Drakh sensor radii, you know." In other words, they had been paranoid about the fact that Omni sensors simply could not in theory reach ground through a decent atmosphere thanks to all the potential stealth technologies they knew of.

He rolled his brown eyes "Sounds about right to me, but I meant other than that obvious option."

She opened one crimson eye and looked lazily at him "You're alliterating a lot with your o's, you know. But in any case, another problem is that we assumed most foods to be non-luxuries, and now it turns out the Centauri almost only trade for luxuries, and all their traded foods are luxuries because they keep their planetary populations small enough to easily grow enough food locally to feed the populace, even if it was with non-industrial agriculture they could manage well enough."

"Good to see you read the reports before I decided to bitch at you."

She shrugged and shifted a bit to feel more comfortable "I try."

"It's not right, being so greedy and grabbing territory from neighbours without even trying to use their own territory efficiently." Xavier groused "And it's not like they have the excuse of constant war keeping border worlds' populations low to ease evacuations either."

"So, Unrestricted Convoy Warfare?" Commander T'Soni sat up now, opening both eyes and seeming almost blood-crazed from the way they seemed to almost glitter.

"You always go straight for the most bloody option…"

His tone was resigned, but she still needed to make her point absolutely clear "They will be willing to use refugee ships as meat shields, or pack refugees in along with their luxury shipments, unless we are willing to be unrealistically surgical and actually capture their ships instead… hmm. That's actually a viable option given we can jump away with Mass Effect or Warp drives before any of their reinforcements can arrive, hack into their computers, wipe their logs, and use reclamation to disarm any bombs. Then we can use the PA to order them to move into certain compartments and to throw the luxuries into other, non-essential compartments before we laser those compartments off, patch the ships enough with their original hull compositions to be space-worthy… and jettison them near their destinations. Express service for passengers, but not cargo. We would need to increase the number of ships on-duty in Centauri space though, probably to about two or three thousand to make this method remotely viable. The downside is that those passengers will be subjected to the wrath of the greedy nobility and all killed anyways, unless we just kidnap them and establish some sort of independent Centauri colony somewhere. That would require a good portion of our fleet to defend as it'll fly in the face of the mad Centauri emperor. My conclusion is that Unrestricted Convoy Warfare is our best option."

"And of course, you're right. I can't overlook how many of those flying back and forth between Centauri worlds are nobles themselves attending each other's functions anyhow. If it was up to me, I'd make a series of broadcasts announcing the closing of the sky before implementing it, to cut down on actual civilian casualties. Nobility will probably mostly be too arrogant or inbred to heed the warning, and that means we get to clean house for the Centauri a little before the Yonji arrive."

"You're in command, well, nominally at least, of this operation, you know."

Xavier internally found this claim to be laughable "Meh, it's a joint command at most, I'll be recording the speech now, we can talk later if there's anything really worth talking about."

XX

_Centauri Space, Local date July 8-10, 2260, Coalition date June 18-20, 3872_

"Citizens of the Centauri Empire! We the Coalition of Species declare that no interplanetary convoy traffic will occur as of one Earth day from the time of this announcement. Assuming you value your lives, you are advised to cancel all reservations for interplanetary travel immediately. This is no idle threat, as anyone stupid enough to be on a flight that launches after tomorrow will find. Let it be a lesson that the Centauri are not superior to anyone else. You all still bleed like everyone else, and you can still die like anyone else. This is your first and last warning. By the way, to the lunatic Cartagia and ay other Centauri nobility, we'd like to challenge you to try to fly to some other planet, if you believe us to be so inadequate. Of course, if you do so, your lives are forfeit."

Xavier knew full well that the nobles would send bait ships out to try to ambush the convoy raiders by having fleets lie in wait in hyperspace. The big problem with that strategy for the Centauri at least was the fact that Coalition battle doctrine said fighters were the primary offensive weapons while larger ships were used for purposes such as blockading. An additional complication to the Centauri side was the fact that Coalition fighters could fly without consuming any non-renewable onboard resources, at least in space, so their combat range was theoretically infinite, restricted only by their lack of FTL and the times involved in getting anywhere. Add to that the fact that coasting allowed for regeneration of "fuel" and, well… The only problems with that method were potential detection by the enemy and subsequent attrition from enemy fire before they reached striking distance, but that would only even matter with Drakh sensors or Shadow/Vorlon sensors.

However, as long as no Drakh ships were present, that would hardly be a problem since the Centauri would never see them coming. Even with the Drakh attrition wouldn't be as high as feared so long as they stuck to Revenant T3 Strategic Bombers and a few Geminis for anti-fighter duty—Drakh sensor range wasn't THAT good against active stealth. Although the Revenants' own Electron Autocannons would probably be able to eliminate Centauri fighters, Drakh Raider-class "fighters" were another matter entirely. Geminis would be able to tie the glorified corvettes up with numbers while Revenants made their relatively ponderous attack runs on the enemy capital ships. The Centauri wouldn't be able to detect active-stealthed craft unless they sheared off a Centauri antenna with a wing or something similar, but—and this was critical—they could well be receiving sensor feeds from the Drakh or even Shadow technology.

In any case, attacks on convoys would not be carried out by marauding cruisers as per the envisioned doctrines of late 19th and early 20th century admirals, but by the modern equivalent of submarines. Well, perhaps not quite, because that would mean squadrons of stealthed frigates, but the stealthed starfighter swarms that would be employed were far more deadly than any frigate clusters. Starfighters might actually be more analogous to the ancient submarines given how frail they were individually and how much damage they could do relative to their own size and durability. The point was that the Centauri were about to understand what real commerce raiding meant. If that got the nobility to buckle down and realize that sometimes money didn't provide solutions for everything, well then, all the better. However, that was regarded as, at best, _highly_ unlikely without just about all of said nobility being very, very dead first.

One day later, the Coalition struck.

One day later, the Centauri Empire basically _died_.

There were a few things to note, though, about the attacks. Most of them were deployed using huge swarms of small warships carrying starfighters. It had been notable how cost-ineffective small warships were against the Covenant, particularly their Plasma Projectors, and that had caused them to be more or less phased out of the Coalition combat inventory after the first days of the Covenant War. They retained use as long-range pickets and scouts scattered throughout interstellar space, but beyond that the Coalition rarely used ships under at least 800 metres length simply because they would suffer enough attrition that fighter swarms were more economical. Huge, powerful capital ships were for defending, small, cheap, and swarming fighters for attacking. Things in between could be useful at times and for pickets, but could also fall into an uncanny valley of being rather hard to use in combat, lacking enough of both the survivability of capital ships and the sheer numbers and manoeuvrability of fighters.

However, if certain conditions were met, then all hell would break loose. For one, the enemy had to be using continuous-beam weapons that took more time to train on a target than to punch straight through it and which were low-yield enough that wild swiping couldn't punch through (unlike Minbari against starfighters). There had to be a LOT of targets, more than were practical in the short term with capital ships. Profile clearance time had to also enough to evade quite a bit more damage than capital ships would with their more ponderous movements. In other words, all hell did, in fact, break loose, at least from the Centauri perspective.

Centauri space traffic was drowned in an avalanche that they didn't stand a chance against. The snow crystals of the proverbial avalanche were the frail but innumerable fighters and the pebbles the minor warships that had brought them into the battle-spaces. Although, perhaps landslide would have been a more appropriate term, as the ratio of pebble to snowflake numbers was a bit too high for the term "avalanche" to be applied… but that was beside the point.

XX

_Babylon Five, Local date July 10, 2260, Coalition date June 20, 3872_

"You really don't beat around the bush, do you?" Sheridan said with a sigh.

Xavier grimaced "No, we don't."

"It's a lot of casualties, Grand Crusader, and there will be even more when Cartagia starts throwing tantrums at not having off-world goods available for him to use and discard…"

Commander T'Soni put her face next to Xavier's and Sheridan noticed her hair push Xavier's head aside, staying as round and glossy as ever without the slightest hint of give to the green helmet-like formation "That's the Centauri's problem. If the peasants are too dumb to rebel, then they may, along with the rest of the planet, be collateral damage statistics, the price paid to end this ridiculous war. The Centauri will know the pain they inflicted on others of this sector, and if they do nothing but hate us for it, well too bad, it just shows they didn't learn. The Coalition doesn't like to employ the idea of 'might makes right', but sometimes it's the only thing some people understand. Yes, we will arouse their hatred, but that hatred will be impotent and fade with time. Of course, we'll try to save as many as we can, but if Cartagia burns his own homeworld then too bad for them. I think we shouldn't go with the plan of installing Londo as Emperor anymore, maybe a provisional interim ruler before we can move toward a parliamentary democracy, but nothing more. Quite simply, an empire is too dangerous, too much power will go to anyone's head… absolute rulers all go berserk sooner or later. Hell, the power to, at least for a while, rifle through timelines had driven ME somewhat insane… does this grin look sane to you?" She grinned wider than a typical human could, showing gleaming, neat white teeth, and opened her bright red eyes as far as possible. Then she shut her mouth "All deranged joking aside, I think it's time for the Republic to change, because they can't just keep going on with their snotty 'good old days' Republican bullshit."

"What's 'Republican' supposed to refer to?" Xavier asked. "If it's a pun, I think your sense of humour might need some work."

Commander T'Soni seemed to ignore him "I think you guys also had the United States of America, as per the Vorlons' rip-off of our history and pasting it onto you?" Sheridan nodded slowly. "Well, Xavier, you wouldn't believe how much bullshit your dear Hannah had to put up with in a previous life from the Republican Party and their ideological successors in an another universe. They were dominated over there, at least in terms of who the most vocal parts were, by a bunch of psychotic ultraconservative fundamentalists. The imbeciles just wouldn't die out, which was a pain in the ass, then again idiocy is always existent, however unfortunate that may be."

"Can we return to the here and now please?" Xavier asked, wondering how this woman ever managed to so dominate ACU warfare if she was this prone to bouts of distraction… _Ah, right, Future Sight… and time loop requirements. Then again she did beat me nineteen times out of twenty when we went up against each other in matches—I only escaped once by Quantum Gate—and has managed to thoroughly trounce everyone else in the simulators._

"Of course, the point is that we need to give the Centauri a somewhat cleaner slate to work with and hose off all the refuse that has built up on their minds. Whether that hose be propaganda, a Great Purge by the lunatic Emperor, or a deluge of T3 Strategic Bombers i.e. us doing the job for the purge, is strictly up to Cartagia. Self-determination, after all, is the most important thing an organic civilization must have. Unfortunately the Vorlons have taken it away from you all for quite some time… and must be made to pay for this."

"I don't think 'do something or we blow you all up' sounds like self-determination to me." Sheridan had the feeling he was in a bad sitcom from what this woman's diction.

"I also don't think browbeating them out of their own stupidity is self-determination, but occasionally it needs to be done anyways… still, the Vorlons will get their wake-up call in due time… and that time is imminent. Do you understand what I mean, Sheridan?"

"Something bad is about to happen, and it involves the Vorlons."

"…You know, if it wasn't for the fact that it would sound condescending, I'd shout something along the lines of 'give the man a cookie!'"

Sheridan rolled his eyes and turned toward Xavier's face on his screens "she's having another unhinged episode, isn't she?"

Xavier shrugged "What does it look like?"

"… right, shouldn't have bothered to ask. Thanks for the warning, does Kosh know?"

Xavier nodded "I've briefed him, he says his people can do nothing to truly change the Shadows' actions."

"So the Shadows will start this disaster that's supposed to befall the Vorlons… bringing in those you call the Yonji Sinhindrea. You know, I'd appreciate if you didn't talk like Kosh."

Commander T'Soni shook her head sharply as if to clear it, then smiled a bit "Ouch… I suppose I deserved that. The Shadows are going to open an inter-galactic gateway the Vorlons originally built, it leads to the Large Magellanic Cloud, the Coalition's Large Magellanic Cloud, the fourth largest galaxy in the local region besides our Milky Way, Andromeda i.e. your Milky Way, and Triangulum. From there, comes the ones the Vorlons call the Great Enemy. We've warned the Shadows of the danger involved in opening that gateway, but I foresee they will do it anyways. The Yonji will come, and we will destroy the gate, then annihilate their expeditionary forces. Once the Coalition finishes with their much individually weaker but surprisingly wiser siblings in the Milky Way, we'll go and annihilate every last Yonji there and in intergalactic space. By doing so we shall smack their relatives' mistakes in the Vorlons' faces. No Yonji Sinhindrea will be permitted to continue to exist, though their sibling races will, perhaps even the ones we call Reapers, provided they see some sense, scan be allowed to continue."

"In other words, if they bow down to your ways."

"Pretty much, although I don't have high hopes for the Reapers. No, before you even ask, I'm not telling you everything that'll happen and all the races' interconnections, you need to figure it out for yourself."

"In other words, you are so assured of victory that you're letting us enjoy the journey to it on our own terms."

The green-haired woman smiled, knowing where this was going "Pretty much."

"It seems old, wise people do have this sort of debilitating tendency to toy with us." Sheridan commented to Xavier this time.

Xavier nodded "That they do, sometimes it's genuine toying, other times, they want us to figure things out for ourselves."

"Well, I hope we don't get too much collateral damage, Commander T'Soni, or the blood spilt by the Yonji Sinhindrea will be on your hands."

"I have quite enough blood on my hands already, a little more won't hurt much… uh oh." Commander T'Soni said as a message came in and she read it.

"Kosh calls!" Corwin reported on Sheridan's end.

"The Vorlons and Shadows are attacking in tandem." Xavier stated blandly.

Sheridan's eyebrows flew upward "WHAT?"

Commander T'Soni's lips were curled into a grimace "But Kosh will not stand with them. He has determined his own path. He is trying to warn you, but the Collective probably ostracized him, so his information, this warning, will be too late."

"Can you reinforce the planets under attack?" Sheridan asked hopefully.

"We had twenty-three battle groups available on local date June 21, and we lost five of them in the battles on that day. Ten more were completed from unfinished hulls within the next week and our gantry outputs equalled sixty percent of a battle group per day from June 21 onward, since our warships are no longer replicating. Of course, that stopped on July 2nd, so we should have only amped out seven more groups before we replicated the gantries, which took three days, to July 5th, two hundred gantries can churn out eight hundred hulls per day. Only about three battle groups or 1500 of those new hulls have been completed, but you do the math. We lost another four in the decimation of the Centauri and apparent Drakh forces. So we have twenty-six battle groups available for offensive operations, since we're keeping eight to guard our shipyards. This means we can cover a maximum of four or five of the ten worlds being razed. To cover more would require we pull out our ace in the hole, not to mention pull a couple battle groups off of shipyard duty. Vorlon capital ships are worth three to four of ours each, at least, hence we cannot afford to attack on a ratio of less than six to one to be safe."

Sheridan's mental math gave him a surprising result "The Vorlons alone have two thousand ships to commit to the attacks on our colonies?"

"Yes, without apparently depleting their forces arrayed against the Shadows. It seems both of the older races held strategic reserves to be used as a last-ditch effort or to spring on the younger races if they acted up too much. Kosh understands that we are not a threat, but the rest of his people do not. Earth Force is about to be hit in a few minutes' time by the Vorlon offensive that is about to begin. They unwisely ignored Kosh when he warned them that we were not the same as you. They are attacking multiple spots simultaneously to spur us to split our forces, or, if we do not have enough, to all go after one location so that their reserve fleets can pounce on us and destroy us. Now, go talk to Kosh, or he'll get impatient."

"Alright, talk later, Commander T'Soni, please reinforce those colonies at your earliest convenience."

"How many and which colonies do you think we can actually afford to reinforce?" Commander T'Soni asked Xavier Fran after Sheridan hung up.

"We can reinforce the three Orion System Colonies as they are in the same star system, the MacArthur Midrange Colony, and Tariff's Colony… and that's it."

"Tariff's Colony? Xavier, have you forgotten your roots, how you came from a post-Scarcity society? A commercial colony whose economy functions on bribes, bets and payoffs, and which is the local present equivalent of Wall Street back in the late twentieth to early twenty-second centuries, is _not worth saving_! I mean, there's nothing wrong with capitalism, especially in a Scarcity society, but runaway capitalism with no rules is not conductive to anything positive. It would be feudalism where the top echelons are so busy trying to oppress the bottom and the bottom are so busy with subsistence that no one has time to progress." _Really, you'd think after Hannah burnt down several Wall Streets in multiple distant pre-incarnations he'd be of a similar mind, but apparently not. Ah well, partners can't be too similar or they start getting bored of one another, I suppose…_

"Alright, so we re-divide the forces… we send eight Battle Groups to the MacArthur Midrange Colony to swarm the Vorlons with about four million starfighters, and the other eighteen go the Orion System to relieve one planet at a time. Which side do you want to command?"

"I will handle the Orion colonies, you'd probably do something impulsive like pull out the _Ascendant Justice_ if the Vorlons levelled one of those colonies. We need that ship to rape Yonji dreadnoughts quickly before they can get a shot off, something our fighters, with their speeds, might not be able to do. What matters is that the Yonji cannot be permitted to know of the ship before we sic it on them. Also, the Vorlons and Shadows also need to be kept in the dark. They most likely expect us to do this set of colonies, but they have little expectation on the growth rates of our fleets. They actually NEED us to defend these five colonies if they are to spring their trap with the fleets they have committed, and they chose the set of colonies knowing that we couldn't in theory leave the economy or morale of Earth Alliance to take a heavy blow."

Xavier snorted "Thank you for the show of faith, sound strategy, I suppose, making them believe we're playing into their hands only to flood them with starfighters."

"Don't mention it, now, let's go about showing the Vorlons who's the new landlord in the area. Oh, and Xavier? Don't destroy them too much, we want them to witness what their descendants, or rather, relatives, have become. In the event you face a Shadow fleet, also try to scare them off by blotting our their sensors with our starfighter clouds and disabling them all instead of destroying them. They must see what precedent their actions set and the consequences it led to. They might have reinforcements that are equal to their fleet presence in numbers, but we have innumerably more starfighters to drown them in."

Xavier keyed in the relevant coordinates for his section of the Coalition Andromeda Command fleet and awaited the charging of their Quantum Jump Drive capacitors "Now that it's just us, why are you being so vague?"

"I'll tell you later, when we have time to cover it in somewhat more detail… To battle now!"

XX

"They come." Kosh did his race's equivalent of a sigh, which his translator interpreted as such. "I congratulate your race, for you have done what all others have failed to do to date, uniting the Vorlons and Shadows under a single banner. Of course, should T'Soni be correct, the Anti-Life shall do the same, but for every race in this sector of the galaxy. The folly of my brethren saddens me as much as what they deem to be my closeness to you younglings saddens them."

"Kosh, the Coalition people told me a moment ago that the Vorlons and Shadows are attacking Earth Alliance holdings together."

"Indeed, the First and Second Reserve Fleets of my people are on the move. The First will attack while the Second awaits in hyperspace. They predicted the Coalition would go for the clustered colonies. Tariff's Colony was important to your economy and MacArthur Midrange to your morale, and the Orion System is nearby. They predict the Coalition will throw in all its available fleets in the sector to relieve the three. They do not understand."

"They do not understand what? The Coalition's numbers?"

"Yes, any pitched battle is hopeless. Hit and run, as the Shadows do, and running battles are mandatory. In a way, I am glad my people do not understand. I am also glad the Coalition will be aiming to incapacitate."

"How are you so sure they will?"

"If they speak truth, when the Great Enemy comes again, though I cannot fathom how…" _No, that can't be, right? The Gateway was lost long ago… it most likely was destroyed by the waves and eddies created by the Hyperspace Destabilization Generators we stationed all over the sector… but it has to be, right? If we're going to find a way to stem their flow, the Gateway must be found and opened before it can be destroyed to end the flow that would occur… the flow which has to occur in the first place._ "Then they will wish for our aid. They will wish to jam our mistake in our faces… as is, in a way, fitting. Perhaps they can even remind us of the way we have lost… of the races that have fallen in the past wars between the Vorlons and Shadows. I wish my brethren would comprehend this lesson, but alas they do not, and likely will not, understand…"

XX

_Orion System, Local date July 10, 2260, Coalition date June 20, 3872_

Commander T'Soni was grabbing groups of icons and repositioning them constantly on the holographic strategic display as she engaged the Vorlons in the Orion system. The old ones had attained total orbital superiority by the time she'd arrived. They had fourteen hundred warships in the system, with one hundred at each colony world and 1100 as a mobile force. That 1100 had been caught in open space and engaged by nine thousand Coalition warships and their nearly nine million starfighters. They had been thoroughly disabled (in other words, assorted ship-to-ship weapons had been rammed up their engines until they were completely unable to move and their weapons were surgically blown away) before the Vorlons could bring in their reinforcements. It had cost a bit over fifteen hundred of her ships and well over half a million starfighters before it could be done, but they'd managed to disable the Vorlon ships without killing them, save about a hundred or so.

The 2000 more assorted Vorlon cruisers and destroyers that tried to jump in on her face fared rather worse, more than 400 of them dying before all were disabled. The cost for that clash was only one thousand more or her own warships, but two million more starfighters, as she'd jumped her capital ships to the fringes of Vorlon engagement ranges, reducing the weapons effectiveness of the Vorlon vessels, while letting starfighters swarm over the Vorlons and blow everything dangerous off their hull frames.

Needless to say, the Vorlons were not pleased about this, and Kosh had to put on the mental earplugs over at Babylon 5 to block out all the whining as the 2900 crippled warships were towed back to the nearest Vorlon planet and tossed into an orbit around the star that was out near its gas giant. They were extremely displeased with how he'd failed to inform them of the Coalition fleets' numbers, and they let him know it. His response was that he had warned them the Coalition was capable of expanding their numbers extremely rapidly and that they should be grateful the younglings hadn't simply destroyed their vessels, as would have been simpler to do. Besides, he was surprised himself at the younger race's strength.

The Vorlons quickly reached a consensus that they kept Kosh, a known sympathizer of the younger races, out of. These young ones were too dangerous and uncontrolled, like the Ashen had turned out to be, they needed to be purged. Fortunately there were enough forces between the Vorlons and Shadows to hit every humans colony at once, so the Coalition couldn't hope to save all of them, and the ones they did save, well, they could just combine their armadas for crushing force-of-arms superiority when it came time to stomp on those.

The truly sad thing about all this was the fact that the Coalition also had the thought of "We Have Reserves", but on a much larger scale relative to their active forces' numbers.

XX

_Babylon Five, Local date July 10, 2260, Coalition date June 20, 3872_

Xavier had repulsed the Shadow attack effectively as well, but had been chewed up rather worse by it. Apparently the Shadows had decided upon sighting the number of starfighters involved that running and gunning was the best option, which resulted in Xavier withholding his yet-un-launched starfighters and going FTL to essentially surround the Shadows with a sphere of starfighters. Crushing inward had been simple, the Shadow fleet jumping in outside their Slipspace phasing jamming range (admittedly very small) and burrowing into one side of the shell had been less simple to deal with. The small Slipspace phasing jamming ranges meant that the ships of the Coalition had to mix it up with the Shadows too, which was rather irritating. The Shadows had still eventually begun to succumb to the hordes of starfighters and warships, and had tried to blast their way out only to find that, with more FTL options available, the Coalition could keep up. In the end, more than forty percent of the 1200 Shadow warships involved in the battle were killed as a result of their arrogant tendency to try suicidal ramming. That had been due to the shorter Slipspace phasing jamming ranges compared to the Slipspace portal jamming ranges.

Now, he was faced with a much more daunting task, namely getting the reasons why Commander T'Soni insisted on withholding data out of her.

"Sometimes in the past, during my Origin's normal Gardevoir life, Xavier, during her undeath, and even after her rebirth—no, not reincarnation, rebirth—all the way through her ACU pilot years, she would occasionally feel as if something was watching her. It felt like a force from beyond this reality somehow. During my time ruffling through realities and timelines as my Origin reincarnated and her, well, _my_ body rested, I found that in some timelines, the Infinite War existed only in the context of video games as entertainment. In some of those realities, the events we are going through now are being written as fiction. It would not do for an author who somehow records everything I say or think to give away everything to his readers before the time is right. For example, what the Rim is, where the Yonji and Reapers came from, and so on."

Xavier looked unimpressed "You do realize however, by explaining that reasoning—if it could be called that—then assuming this conversation is indeed being transcribed, you are dooming him or her to breaking the fourth wall?"

"I am fully aware of that, however the consequences of breaking the fourth wall are considerably less dire than giving out all the juicy bits of a story before the time is right. It is especially forgivable if the author makes clear that I actually saw the author—sometimes male, sometimes female—doing the chronicling of my existence. I assume that by saying this I'm being recorded and he or she now knows that I did in fact watch his existence. I did not take advantage of his chronicling of future events much due to my ability of Future Sight and the fact that the Multiverse decided to forbid me from seeing those parts, but I can't help but wonder what their reactions to typing these words I am speaking on their computers were like…"

Xavier thought this an amazingly plausible explanation given the pseudo-insanity he'd come to almost expect from her "…I think you need to take a rest, go on vacation somewhere and relax for a bit. Given I am in agreement with you, I think I need to do the same."

Commander T'Soni snorted "Right, for you it was pretty much straight out of the Infinite War into seducing Hannah, being introduced to your grown sons, sending Hannah off through time without so much as a goodbye, meeting her older and wiser self briefly before being sent off on this half-assed expedition… yeah I can see why you'd want a break."

XX

A/N: I'm suddenly wondering if I should randomly wave over my shoulder to Commander T'Soni as I type, or do a shout-out. I don't expect her to respond however, although if I hear voices in my head, that would roughly translate to a reaction on my part of O_O

XX

"Right, so when are we expecting the next Vorlon or Shadow offensive? The intel says the other colonies have been completely levelled using either one of those Shadow Death Clouds or some sort of large Vorlon dreadnought weapon."

"They're bringing out their planet-killers, huh? Well, they'll be needing them very soon… long-range scans are beginning to show energy signatures from Z'ha'dum that are growing higher and higher… the Shadows should have the gateway open within a day or two… You'd think an ancient race lie that would be a great deal wiser, but apparently not. At least we planted all sorts of charges on our Gateway before trying to activate it…"

"So soon? Our fleets are inadequate still!"

"I know that, Xavier, hell, right now, and probably for the next couple months, if the Vorlons and Shadows really made a push they could defeat us decisively. Well, at least we have not ground too much of the Vorlon and Shadow fleets to scrap, nor allowed them to grind themselves to scrap. Once they realize they will not want to go to the Rim, they will stand and fight with us. How's Dusk been doing?"

Xavier rifled through the reports to Kelly's "Still eating rocks once in a while, her weapon buds are starting to develop now, which is surprisingly fast for such a large organism. Progress on counteracting the long-pulse nature of Shadow weapons is going relatively well although we can't mitigate the longer pulse lengths we're seeing in most of the weapons, we've managed to deal with the shorter, similarly spaced-out pulse lengths seen in some of the smaller weapons platforms, namely the fighters."

"Good, the Vorlons' weapons are no problem for us, as the standard armament's basically an anti-matter particle beam… which acts as just a normal particle beam against our shields and more or less so against our structural fields, vastly reducing its power."

"Wonderful… what's wrong?" Commander T'Soni's face had just gone rigid and her smirk had turned into a deep frown and grimace. A moment later his sensor alerts began going off and he noticed the Z'ha'dum scan signatures had skyrocketed.

"They… are coming. The Yonji Sinhindrea have arrived."

XX

A/N: My Fire Emblem video watching told me that: the recruitment chat with the Einherjar cards sounds like they are, in fact, sentient. This leads me to one unfortunate conclusion: Similar mechanisms can explain the existence of Crystal (The Librarian), Horcruxes, and Einherjar (Horcruxes are the most different of the three from the others). If anyone wants to use my soul-replication mechanisms or a variant thereof for a Fire Emblem fanfic, please feel free to do so to your heart's content.

Review Replies!

**Achronus (Spacebar)**: You forget one other application of ships with FTL: Terror, or bringing the weapons used for terror. There is nothing quite like a Super Carrier appearing, uncontested, on top of your head and systematically burning its way across a planet's surface in terms of yelling "you're screwed" to anyone who doesn't have the raw numbers of the Coalition (you're right in that Super Carriers have been observed to tank fighter swarms for quite a long while btw). However, this is a post Attack/Defence matter, after space superiority and most of the Suppression of Enemy Aerospace Defence (SEAD) tasks have been achieved, so it's not that relevant. Tentacles: "Order From Chaos" is something the Vorlons and Reapers both spout with regularity, hence…yeah. Pokémon: Effectiveness to Mass ratio is on par with Coalition hardware for relatively normal well-experienced units, however at the upper end of the experience range, things get a bit iffy. However, that would mean the Zerg would need to study the art of smaller numbers since exp only spreads out so far between units, as every individual of a unit has a slightly different field pattern. Note that the Protoss are not in fact as weak as previously portrayed, for various reasons that will be explained later (e.g. Selendis uses the Haven incident as proof that the fleet should all receive the same sort of maintenance schedule—giving her a pile of vaguely functional scrap to work with just because she's female is rather beyond just irritating).

**Nenfaer**: Jack is at least more sane than Van Gogh, Picasso, etc… although that's not saying much. Will put codices in as soon as I start employing them. Minbari Continuous Beam problem will be resolved shortly and be so obvious they're tempted to bang their heads on the nearest hard surface, but Shadow and Vorlon beams are less easy to resolve. What time loop? So far I have 3, the 105,000-year Forerunner time loop that provided the Forerunners and made sure humanity existed to go back to found the Forerunner civilization, Hannah's 3,000-year jump to ensure the Cybran Nation wins by searching for and bringing Commander T'Soni to the CN, and the Vorlons' 1000-year loop. They're chained into each other like a chain, because since during one the next's existence is already present, the next must occur… sounds more complicated than it is. Please remember that 6 weeks is halfway to eternity with massed Coalition-style warfare, ACUs on the ground and swarms of capital ships slugging it out or stand-offing in orbit…

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	20. Family Feud

A/N: Well, I guess the last chap wasn't that well-received as it felt like filler… **World of Tanks is eating my time alive these days (ergo almost no updates this summer :( )**.

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Chapter 20: Family Feud

_Babylon Five, Local date July 11, 2260, Coalition date June 21, 3872_

"They come. We stand, but even as we stand with the Dark Ones, they pour through." Kosh said ominously as he bobbed up and down in his encounter suit in Sheridan's office, the approximate Vorlon counterpart to pacing a rut into the floor or rocking up and down on one's toes. "Our fleets have been diminished by the Coalition… time will be required to heal, time we may not have."

"How long can you hold them?" Sheridan asked, looking at the long-range scan data he was getting from the _Surveyor_. "What about the rest of your reserves?"

"The Anti-Life will defeat our fleets within one week if we cannot close the Gateway."

"What if we can close the Gateway?"

"If you close it now, we should be able to defeat them. If two days from now, we will win, but it will take at least one month before we can destroy the fleets they have brought. The ravenous beasts have been awaiting this for millennia, it seems. They poured fleets through the Gateway the moment it was opened."

Sheridan sighed "Wonderful… For a people who preach self-determination so much, the Coalition does tend to get people leaning on them for aid a lot, don't they?"

"My brethren are too proud… no, too arrogant, to see the truth. They see the Coalition as a sort of chaos, an unknown variable. I… I know not what I see anymore. But I know this: what I see in them… is much of what my people have lost. Maturity, dignity, responsibility… and a certain degree of madness, but every race must appear eccentric to other races, I suppose. Have you asked Commander T'Soni about this matter?"

"She says she will tell us both of the origins of the Yonji Sinhindrea when the time is right, and to, to quote her, 'give Kosh another taste of his own medicine'."

Kosh wondered briefly if he should use one of the gestures he'd learnt from the younger races. Said gesture involved introducing the front of his forehead, or helmet, to his palm, and could be performed either at high or low speed, although speed was directly related to how potentially painful the gesture could be for the performer. They called it, aptly, a facepalm, though in his case it would be a helmet-palm instead. Then he thought better of it. "Perhaps this is deserved, but call her now, see what she says."

Sheridan shoved his stack of paperwork aside and selected the relevant commands to put a call to the _Surveyor_ "Hello, this is Sheridan, can I speak with Commander T'Soni for a moment?"

The image feed resolved itself almost right away, with the woman having her arms crossed on the desk she was at "Good day, Captain Sheridan. I assume you're calling to talk about the new problem we have on our hands… continue our discussion from yesterday?"

"Could you help shut down that Gateway?" Sheridan decided to be blunt.

The woman grimaced "We're working on a solution at the moment. It should work well enough to destroy the Gateway, but we need at least a few hours to actually deploy it on-site." Said solution involved shoving a ship stuffed to the brim with antimatter warheads at the Gateway and setting it off to blow the thing to bits. "It doesn't matter where the Yonji came from at the moment, what matters is getting rid of them, I'll tell you about that later if this is going to be the third time you hassle me over it." She smiled a bit at Sheridan. "If there is one good thing about the Yonji, it is that while we will serve as the main bulwark against them, the younger races will be given the chance to learn to unite to help push them back. Yes, we could do it for them, but the younger local races need to learn to grow… to work together to understand who each of them are, what they want, why they want it, where it will come from, when they will be ready for it, how they will achieve it, and how much it will cost them. There are generally five W's and two H's in life, the same ones that are found in news reporting, you've both focused too much on only one of them for it to be good for you."

The main reason they needed a few hours? It wasn't just fabrication of the warheads and packing the ships (of course they'd send many) full of them, they also needed a few moments' window of insertion to give the Quantum Jump the time needed to fully decant into normal space. Given how many Yonji warships surrounded the Gateway, it would take at least half an hour before a gap in their movement pattern could open enough to be sure they could get the kamikaze ships through.

"I'm thinking we could use those few hours to review some information about the Yonji, since you didn't exactly tell us much about them beforehand other than the fact that they have energy shields and are complete lunatics." Sheridan shuffled some of his paperwork around on his desk.

"There is no reasoning with the Anti-Life, they only see you as one of three, food, threat, or insignificant. Being any of the three mean they will try to destroy you." Kosh said.

Commander T'Soni nodded "He's right, which is why they will inevitably fail as a predatory species, for they are so terrified of life and the power it holds that they would destroy all their prey without a second thought, then turn upon themselves. They must be put down, and we will do it once and for all once the Reaper War back home and this little incursion are cleared up."

Sheridan pursed his lips before saying "I will draft a call for a conference of all the local races while you get on that Gateway-destruction project."

"That would be best, yes." They all knew what that meant. The Yonji were very likely to attack the conference to try to disrupt it, and repulsing such an attack with the Coalition fleets on hand would put a good show of strength on for the local races to give them the understanding that the situation was far from hopeless. Given the fact that the Vorlons and Shadows were also to be present to declare this a joint cause, the locals would surely understand the gravity of the situation… "Kosh, your people are coming to the conference, yes?"

"Yes, and the Shadows will too." Kosh sighed "I would appreciate no lecture on the immaturity of our past, Commander T'Soni. Lyta could tell you all about the debacle should the Commander choose not to." The last part of his words was no question, for he said "You had Seen it."

"There were some things I thought it perhaps better that you not know, Kosh of Vorlon, but I have reconsidered. Do you wish for me to tell everyone here where the Yonji Sinhindrea originated?"

Kosh's reply was to snort in irritation "Never before would I have expected to feel the irritation the younger races often feel toward me and my manner of speech and baiting. Out with it!"

"Very well, Kosh." The green-haired woman sighed "Private meeting in ten minutes on the _Surveyor_, Sheridan, Ivanova, Kosh and Lyta Alexander are invited. We're sending a Gemini over to pick you guys up now."

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_CSC Surveyor, Near Babylon Five, Local date July 11, 2260, Coalition date June 21, 3872_

"The events that led to the Vorlons as we know them today began over a hundred million years ago, long before the first placental mammal. I'll give you a brief overview. A young race, ancestors of the Vorlons, rose up in what the Coalition calls the Large Magellanic Cloud and aspired to be the greatest. In doing so, it trod on too many of the feet of its neighbours and brought all the other races together under one banner to crush them. They built a Gateway… and fled. To throw off the trail of their pursuers, they had constructed Gateways to both of the closest large galaxies. Through one, they sent bio-synthetic drone ships with the directive of obtaining the best technology younger races had to offer and accruing them so that one day they may strike back and defeat the leader race of the alliance that had brought them down, the ones we now call the Shadows. Said drone ship fleet eventually, through many cycles of studying the natural rise and fall of organic civilization, started attempting to preserve the order and innovation each race represented, a trait they'd inherited from their creators, the desire for order." She grimaced and looked at Xavier "I don't think I need to elaborate on that for you to know exactly which race I'm talking about here, the one which the Coalition should currently be thoroughly trouncing back home." The man nodded back with an un-amused look about her keeping this to herself for so long..

The Gardevoir sighed again "Eventually, this preservation deal became forced and they became rather obstinate about doing it, worse than the Soul Hunters here, really. Eventually since the organics were starting to be real dangers to them with salvaging and reverse-engineering, then improving the tech of previous organics, they started basically farming races by restricting the ancient tech they had access to and the methods of transportation, just as their creators had done before being mostly driven out of their home galaxy. They lost their purpose, lost their way, and that, Kosh of Vorlon, is why I am so consistently caustic toward your entire race, for you had unleashed something that destroyed more races than you and your Shadow Wars have. Right, back on track. The vastly larger group of escapee Vorlons, those who were mature enough to recognize defeat, came here. It took them a long time before they started trying their holier-than-thou crap again, and during that time the Shadows had decided to venture beyond their home galaxy and many migrated here, perhaps the intergalactic currents favoured it? The rest mostly died out in intergalactic space, but some remnants lived on and evolved into some of the insectoid races of the Milky Way. Eventually, once both sides had forgotten the other, they met again… and the Shadow Wars began anew with the clash of ideologies. In the meantime, after the Shadows' departure, there were survivors on the Vorlon homeworld, the most vicious, treacherous and cunning Vorlons had survived the orbital bombardment back to the Stone Age, and they began building themselves back up. They tried two more times to conquer their galaxy, each time being annihilated by the alliance that had originally defeated them. It took until their third try, a mere few millennia ago, after millions of years of plotting, that they found most of the alliance had gone to the Rim and then managed to spread across their galaxy like a plague. They haven't gotten anywhere into intergalactic space due to their inability to cope with life not created by them, so they are unable to sustain themselves well enough for an intergalactic invasion. This was right up until the ancient portal that they had no idea how to operate was foolishly opened by the Shadows."

Kosh was rooted to his seat as he blinked a couple times before saying slowly, as if unsure of his own sanity "We built that Gateway here with our own hands, how could we forget that there had been another before it that we had come through?"

"Your ancestors did build it with their hands long ago, but you yourselves reconstructed the derelict Gateway you discovered in your home system, Kosh, your people merely insist on deluding yourselves. You decided, thanks to your then-religion, that it had to be some sort of thing left there by a higher being so that you could access them someday. You decided to try to touch the face of gods and in doing so become gods yourselves, for you believed the younger races' view of your lot as gods. Regardless, Kosh, the Vorlons that were left behind, through over a hundred million years of evolution, became the enemy we are now fighting. Yes, Kosh, you are fighting your own insane relatives who are so terrified of what other life has done to them that they think only they have the right to exist. Your people did not step in to aid the younger races in the Large Magellanic Cloud when you visited there, hence your wayward children brought their madness to your door. You managed to push them back but lost the door and didn't try very hard to find it again, wanting to forget your mistakes, having long forgotten the mistakes that had led you to this point in the first place."

Kosh felt absolutely numb at this entire set of revelations. The Anti-Life was descended from the stock of the Vorlons… It made a despairingly large amount of sense… the Vorlons had wondered during their last war how two such similar races, both strongly telepathic, both believing in a form of order, both formerly aquatic life forms, had behaved and thought so differently. Their similarities could easily be thus explained…

"I think there is a line that an author chronicling our affairs used in his narration of another reality that fits this occasion perfectly, replacing the singular with the plural for the Coalition military as a whole: 'We're not heroes, we're not miracle workers, we're janitors.' Well, Kosh, we're about to start taking out some of the trash that your race managed to produce… of course, not all of it, given you Vorlons are actually mature enough to realize you've made mistakes and aren't out to try to kill everybody, but hey, that's not quite the point here."

"Your attempts at making this less grave are underwhelming." Kosh stated blandly.

"Meh." The rest of the words she delivered were by telepathy _That was the point, failing to lighten the situation just makes it seem heavier._

Kosh mentally sighed _…Right, your methods are yours._

Sheridan and Ivanova were next to start fielding the questions "So, we're fighting the Vorlons' mad relatives. The Vorlons have made a whole slew of mistakes, and the ancestors of the Shadows and Vorlons have fought even in the days of the dinosaurs… great." Sheridan summarized "This is, of course, all to be completely classified, yes? Otherwise the other races might become rather divided on this issue or otherwise be reluctant to join the alliance we will be building."

Kosh bobbed his helmet in the gesture of agreement most popular among the younger races (the race that had once arrogantly called itself Forerunner and their three descendant races known to the Vorlons all had or still have it) "Naturally, though my people must know the truth… if they do not wish to know… I know not what I will do, for they would be more infantile than the youngest races should they outright deny this truth. I know you expect them to deny it, but they cannot… they _will_ not."

Commander T'Soni made a noise halfway between a sigh and a snort "I hope it will be as you say, Kosh of Vorlon. I truly hope it will be as you say. I suppose we should get back to our preparations for the destruction of the Gateway now that you have been given the three-edged sword. Oh, and you know exactly what sort of thing I meant when I spoke of restricting travel options, cut it out, alright? I know it will take decades to lift the restrictions completely, but you should get started on it as soon as possible."

Kosh was less than overjoyed at how annoying it was to have another entity know almost everything about oneself, but perhaps it was appropriate for her to speak to him thus. His people's Hyperspace Disruption Emitter arrays placed in deep space throughout this sector of the galaxy needed to be shut down if they did not wish to again repeat the mistakes of their distant ancestors.

"Lyta, Sheridan, Ivanova, any opinions?" Xavier asked.

"Well, I guess there's not much to say other than the fact that the Vorlons have some pretty insane cousins." Sheridan shrugged. "They can't exactly help their ancestry."

"Though you'd think they'd have learnt some hubris, it HAD been a long time, so forgetting isn't that surprising." Susan Ivanova still bared her teeth and hissed at Kosh when he looked at her with a nod though.

"I was under the impression the Vorlons were into genetic memories? Or are the memories I have received from you wrong?" Lyta asked, eyes narrowed. Recent time spent studying with Kelly, using methods completely different from Psi-Corps' methods, had taught her more skills to unlock such memories if they were present and to decode the instincts and such that they would come as. "Self-delusion is the most dangerous type of delusion, you know that, Kosh." She smirked a bit "It might be ironic that I am saying this, but Kosh, I am disappoint."

Kosh took a moment to look up what that could mean on the Extranet, then looked at Lyta blandly in an implied facepalm.

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_Z'ha'dum, Local date July 11, 2260, Coalition date June 21, 3872_

Tens of thousands of Shadow and Vorlon warships were slugging it out with a comparable but growing number of Yonji warships, and thousands more were arriving, destroying and being destroyed. Both of the local older races were joined by their servant races as they fought the Yonji ships that continued to flood through the Gateway, but they were being steadily pushed back. This had been occurring for hours as the ratio of force of arms swung further and further in favour of the Yonji. It all changed in a mere few moments as a large number of flashes erupted near the Gateway and ten thousand warships slammed into the middle of the fray, discharging millions of starfighters that swallowed up the swarm of Yonji starfighters in their immediate battle-space like a cloud of doom, shredding them with tens of thousands of the equivalent of paper-cuts within half a minute of entering battle.

The Yonji were momentarily stunned by not so much the surprise as the lack of mind-flesh in the invading force. They reacted in seconds, turning their capital ships not yet committed to the main battle lines toward the new threat as it bored down on the Gateway. Individually, Coalition warships were no match for Yonji vessels, but when a hundred fired all their weapons at each Yonji warship directly between them and the Gateway, they could bore through without taking excessive losses. A number of Coalition warships were sliced up or blown apart by Yonji weapons fired into their route or into the huge swarm, but it was a small proportion of their vast numbers and they thundered through, coming so close as to scrape against the shields of Yonji ships exiting the gateway that tried to ram them to stop them while on outbound vectors.

The Yonji managed to form a cohesive barrier of ships remarkably quickly (under a minute) and presented a solid two-layered front to blockade the Coalition vessels halfway from their landing zone to the Gateway. The only response from the Coalition ships was the formation of a more penetrative formation and setting their engines to maximum output. The Yonji could do nothing but to counter-charge while firing all weapons, and the Coalition ships pushed the hulks of their wrecks ahead of them as the two masses of warships closed range. Yonji weapons expending themselves against hundreds of millions of tons of Coalition wreckage while the Coalition vessels fired their missiles around the wrecks. The Coalition warships decelerated so that the wreckage broke itself against the Yonji vessels first, then opened massed fire on the survivors that had blasted through the rubble. Many Yonji warships died in the moment of contact as their shields and hulls shattered under the strain of meeting millions of tons of mass travelling at thousands of kilometres a second, but others powered through by blasting the wreckage aside. The battle lines essentially rammed into one another and the Yonji were puzzled by the lack of self-preservation in these threats. Regardless, they would just be easier to destroy with such an attitude, such was the Yonji way of thought.

Regardless, the Coalition had burnt their way close to the Gateway, despite losing a third of their strength, by virtue of surprising the Yonji enough they couldn't muster a truly solid blockade. Their formation dilated and peeled apart as they approached the Gateway, firing all weapons at the ancient construct while one hundred of their vessels continued toward the Gateway. The rest of the ships disappeared in the distorted blurs of Warp travel as the hundred suicide ships slammed into the perimeter of the Gateway and exploded. The portal fluctuated, tearing the few Yonji ships then passing through to shreds, then collapsed an instant together, shutting off as its power supply was cut. The Gateway tore itself completely to scrap metal under the power of the explosions, its pieces crashing together and breaking up further as it was destroyed. The Shadows and Vorlons, seeing that the Gateway had been permanently disposed of, quickly agreed with each other that continuing to fight as they were, slightly outnumbered, was a pointless waste of strength and that they would withdraw to recuperate for now. This was a wise decision, though the Vorlons were about to have an even larger problem rammed down their throats a la Kosh Naranek.

It was such a ludicrously huge problem that the general consensus of the Vorlon race would come to be that perhaps fighting the Yonji—after the Gateway was annihilated of course—might have been a preferable experience to collectively dealing the massive headache this absurd but painfully plausible tale of their ancestry represented.

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A/N: I am aware I just dumped upon the readers' heads the whole gigantic sea of worms on how the Reapers, Vorlons, Shadows and Yonji are all related. I suspect I will get more reviews than usual for this. I know this chapter is ludicrously short, but the weight of the bomb I just dropped makes this a good cut-off point IMHO.

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**DaLintyMan**: I am aware of that fact.

**Achronus**: I KNOW capitalism is the only stable route, even the Coalition has a monetary system in place to prevent people from getting too lazy and complacent. But you notice I used the Babylon Wiki's description of the colony, which says its economy runs on "bribes, bets and payoffs"? That's a picture perfect vision of how capitalism should NOT work if it is to not turn into feudalism (just the "bribes" part got me with how badly it fails to be properly capitalist). However, in the Coalition's post-scarcity societies, their ideological system is closer to socialism (note: communism is an economic system, an unworkable one, and not an ideological system). The Cybran Nation determines its objectives via majority consensus for example, the UEF runs a parliamentary democracy, and the Aeon Illuminate runs something in between where some things are put to the public psionic vote. Democracy is socialism at its finest, in my opinion. After all, who better to determine the needs of a society than the people of the society? On a more alarming note, you've changed my mental image of the Reapers from a bunch of drone ships gone rampant to something that could have been like N from Pokémon Black and White. That is SCARY. N: "Will you be my friend?" White: "Fuck no." Also, I got this for my versions of the ME 3 Endings: "Fuck your immature 'choices', we're just gonna drown you in our effectively infinite numbers. Now die, thank you very much."

**Kathador**: THANK YOU for accepting my production rates! SO MANY READERS BITCHED ABOUT IT! (Refer to S058 for example of one such reader) The original Commander T'Soni wasn't as crazy, but I assure you that pragmatism meant she still had no problem taking many, many lives. Liara (ME version) had a much softer upbringing and life in general. After all, being a Gardevoir basically meant you fought to grow in strength from birth, and "Gladiator from hatching" is a completely different job description than "Archaeologist after university". Same general template, vastly different results. The Coalition is the only post-scarcity society we are likely to see in my works, by the way, though the Old Races are nearly so.

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